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This is beautifully familiar.
Am I seeing too many similarities between how Twitter/X was taken over and singlehandedly being irreversibly ruined?
While Windows is stubbornly becoming increasingly user-adversarial (advertising, constant intrusive updates, forced transition from your favorite browser to Microsoft Edge, etc.) and unintuitive (sometimes even counter intuitive) interface design, placement and inaccessible settings.
Well, delighting in schadenfreude, I won’t complain. Microsoft is inadvertently helping me help transition many friends, family and colleagues to various flavors of Linux systems, namely Linux Mint (whichever desktop they prefer) and/or Pop!OS most of the time, but also occasionally Fedora or a particular flavor of Ubuntu.
I never recommend Arch or rolling release systems or immutable systems to first time Linux user so as to preemptively avoid additional layers of complexity, learning curve, downtime and troubleshooting.
I just had a shower thought, probably dumb and I am tired, but how about pipes to deliver regular liquids/fluids? 🤔
I think I read somewhere in Germany brewery would have pipes to bars delivering a continuous supply of beer.
Now let’s do that with ultrafiltered and/or ultra-high-temperature milk (less prone to spoiling).
How about adding pipes for beer (or some other alcohol or wine), cooking oil (whichever most suitable), and any other frequently used liquid I forgot?
If spoilage is well controlled, would that be a less energy intensive distribution method?
The essential part at the end:
“ When reached for comment, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt directed me to Reddit’s API FAQ page and said the company couldn’t comment further because it’s in a quiet period and doesn’t “comment on confidential business conversations and/or agreements.” ”
We can infer that it was not the fountain of money they thought it would become.
More telling is their silence. Who doesn’t want to promote and advertise how profitable they are to potential shareholders just before an IPO.
I’m not sure, the logs only mention E:\Movies folder is missing or not being available/accessible (permission issues? Wrong hard drive?).
Something may have happened before the logs were made, or by another application/service service running on your system.
Hopefully it will help you find the source of the error.
Unfortunately, the solutions are fairly easy but it would be political suicide for anyone who would even dare to actually propose anything that would ruffle the feathers of the vested interests, the powerful or (God forbid /s) the wealthiest 10%, or the “untouchable” 0.1%.
Simplify/Regularize the tax code by eliminating all ambiguity :
- by removing exceptions and loopholes for corporation and individuals (it only helps the wealthy with “top gun” accountants to “legally” avoid/reduce taxes).
- pre-filled tax declaration should be expanded or made automatic for every individuals with simple tax situations (they should not be worrying about taxes and tax credits when their income in lower than a inflation indexed preset treshold)
- make everyone’s tax information public or accessible for every citizens similar to Tax transparency in Finland (PDF) it helps prevent/detect/reduce social inequalities and keep every one accountable toward each others
- exclude tax filling softwares and companies whom have vested interest in making tax declarations as complex and as unintelligible as possible by lobbying government
- increase the progressive taxe rate for higher income brackets, add new higher brackets (over 60%) for yearly income over a million, over tens of millions, over hundreds of millions, etc…
- eliminate Religious Tax Exemptions as they have been [abused and misappropriated more often without any real public oversight] (https://centreforinquiry.ca/religious-institutions-and-your-tax-dollars/)
- increase financing and auditing of Canada Revenue Agency to help better pursue, prosecute and recover wealth hidden in tax Havens, or create a new separate branch of the CRA tasked exclusively to handle corporate tax shenanigans/evasion and deep pocketed individuals
This is a partial, but relevant, copy of one of my previous post (check my post history for the original long post).
Unfortunately, the solutions are fairly easy but it would be political suicide for anyone who would even dare to actually propose anything that would ruffle the feathers of the vested interests, the powerful or (God forbid /s) the wealthiest 10%, or the “untouchable” 0.1%.
On one side Simplify/Regularize the tax code by eliminating all ambiguity :
- by removing exceptions and loopholes for corporation and individuals (it only helps the wealthy with “top gun” accountants to “legally” avoid/reduce taxes).
- pre-filled tax declaration should be expanded or made automatic for every individuals with simple tax situations (they should not be worrying about taxes and tax credits when their income in lower than a inflation indexed preset treshold)
- make everyone’s tax information public or accessible for every citizens similar to Tax transparency in Finland (PDF) it helps prevent/detect/reduce social inequalities and keep every one accountable toward each others
- exclude tax filling softwares and companies whom have vested interest in making tax declarations as complex and as unintelligible as possible by lobbying government
- increase the progressive taxe rate for higher income brackets, add new higher brackets (over 60%) for yearly income over a million, over tens of millions, over hundreds of millions, etc…
- eliminate Religious Tax Exemptions as they have been [abused and misappropriated more often without any real public oversight] (https://centreforinquiry.ca/religious-institutions-and-your-tax-dollars/)
- increase financing and auditing of Canada Revenue Agency to help better pursue, prosecute and recover wealth hidden in tax Havens, or create a new separate branch of the CRA tasked exclusively to handle corporate tax shenanigans/evasion and deep pocketed individuals
On the other side, beyond the well meaning but hastily half-baked (I am unqualified to properly evaluate such plan) Canada’s Housing Action Plan, we should create a long term Strategic Urbanization and Cooperative Housing Fund somewhat akin to the Strategic Innovation Fund whereas :
- local-first sustainability, durability, climate change mitigation/adaptation and energy efficiency are prioritized and audited/inspected for renovations and all new future developments
- refrain housing from switching owners too frequently (control exaggerated speculation) or make public a historical record of all inspections reports, renovations, purchase price, owners and in case of an auction make the bidding process, name and amount of bidder transparent to all participants (better overall)
- limit to let’s say 3 to 6 (anything beyond 10 becomes onerous) the numbers of residential building/house/condominium/apartment complex/senior housing/long-term care home a corporation, partnership or a individual can own/manage. 67000 homes owned and managed by a single entity is far beyond reasonable.
- favor and help fund Mass Timber projects instead of concrete construction, by using prefab Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL) for multistory residential habitation. By increasing Mass Timber adoption we help sequester more and more carbon into inert materials (although technically still combustible on the outermost layer).
- prioritize housing co-ops projects that aim to offer affordable housing similar to namely in British-Colombia or in Québec - Interloge (PDF)
- (not a immediate priority, but crucial for the future of Canada) help set up a publicly accessible, interoperable, provincially and municipally controlled and constantly evolving : 5 years/10 years/25 years/50 years/100 years/200 years development roadmaps of natural, public, private and industrial lands/sectors/infrastructures/housing. Doing so will ensure everyone is on the same page with what is happening and what are proposed to happen in their neighborhood within their and their childrens lifetime. Everyone, from scientists to farmers, from residents to international students, from local business owners to local homeless, should be able to submit justified concerns/updates/changes/refusals to any future proposals/projects. Likewise, project proponents should be able to convince, demonstrate, allay, include, update, justifiably dismiss or preallocate equitable compensation publicly. By the time the yearly roadmap is on its way, anything without consensus or majority approval should be reported into the future or rejected, thus no surprise should remain (excepting a archeological/historical discovery or unforeseen dangers/accidents during excavation/construction/renovation).
Well that became more of a long winded exasperation on my part…
But thank you for reading my probably pointless TedTalk®©™ 🤣
I regularly “deep freeze” or make read-only systems from Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu, Linux Mint LMDE and others Linux Distros whereas I disable automatic updates everywhere (except for some obvious config/network/hardware/subsystem changes I control separately).
I have had systems running 24/7 (no internet, WiFi) for 2-3 years before I got around to update/upgrade them. Almost never had an issue. I always expected some serious issues but the Linux package management and upgrade system is surprisingly robust. Obviously, I don’t install new software on a old system before updating/upgrading (learned that early on empirically).
Automatic updates are generally beneficial and helps avoid future compatibility/dependency issues on active systems with frequent user interaction.
However, on embedded/single purpose/long distance/dedicated or ephemeral application, (unsupervised) automatic updates may break how the custom/main software may interact with the platform. Causing irreversible issues with the purpose it was built for or negatively impact other parts of closed circuit systems (for example: longitudinal environmental monitoring, fauna and flora observation studies, climate monitoring stations, etc.)
Generally, any kind of update imply some level of supervision and testing, otherwise things could break silently without anyone noticing. Until a critical situation arises and everything break loose and it is too late/too demanding/too costly to try to fix or recover within a impossibly short window of time.
First, get to know as much as you can about Canada, its Provinces and Territories. Like you asked, you will get a pretty good overview of its culture, food, festivals, history, climate, geography, economy, demography, governments (federal/provincial/municipal).
Secondly, get know the many generations of Ukrainian Canadians that live here throughout Canada. You may find long lost relatives or even old friends 😁 and then Canada won’t be much different from Ukraine, just more people of various culture, religion and walks of life, everyone chipping in trying to make a positive difference in each others lives (although Canada has it own assholes and criminals, they generally tend to not openly/bombastically flout the law).
Work wise, I would recommend to focus on anything related to sustainable development, climate change adaptation and the tech sector as those are where all the investment are being thrown into (renewable energy sector, electric transportation and manufacturing chain, mineral resources exploitation, forestry and sustainable agribusinesses, etc.)
Hopefully, my Canadian 2 cents helps. 😆
Unfortunately, once we reach a point where one half of the country is burning and being smothered by heavy forest fire smoke while the other half of the country is drowning from weekly once-in-a-thousand-year flash floods and the freak hurricane that went out of track and is on its way to make landing on Nova Scotia, we might perhaps collectively agree to finally actually maybe do something about it.
It will probably far too late far too little, and everybody will be too angry looking for their favorite menu du jour scapegoat to burn at the stake for all their misfortune and their nostalgia for the good old times.
We are currently too busy with balancing inflation and deflation, the housing crisis, the international geopolitical chain of powder keg situation, the opioid crisis, the mental health crisis, the skyrocketing cost of living, the nearshoring of manufacturing, the collapse of fisheries and illegal fishing, the prevalence and soaring increase of misinformation without any repercussions, the constant and multifaceted foreign interference by several countries/organizations and private individuals, the numerous environmental issues (from untested insecticides/herbicides, invasive species, innumerable toxic spills/burial/contamination of soil/groundwater/rivers/lakes, pollution, etc.), the constant lack of qualified personnel in every fields in every provinces and territories (teachers, doctors, nurses, judges, daycare attendants, technicians, specialist, etc.), the reconciliation with aboriginals, the accelerating increase of undocumented migrants, the lack of access to basic necessities in our remote regions/villages/reserves, the list of urgent requests that need immediate and continued attention is endless.
Of the above non-exhaustive list of priorities, every Canadian will have their own order of priorities and their particular pet peeves on what is important/urgent and what is unnecessary/superfluous. Nobody can agree, everyone wants to delay and put on ice whatever they perceive as personally non-beneficial or not pertinent from their point of view.
The reality is that we have to accomplish all of them and so much more simultaneously. We could if we decide to cooperate/trust/verify without hindering each other.
Whether that happens or not only time will tell. The hyperobject that is Climate Change is not waiting for anyone.
Hmm… some interesting things to perhaps review :
In total, these four provinces provided at least CAD 2.5 billion in fossil fuel subsidies in fiscal year (FY) 2020/21 and 1.5 billion in FY 2021/22 (as of December 2021)
Source: Blocking Ambition: Fossil fuel subsidies in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador by the International Institute for Sustainable Development
based on recent data from governments and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the leading research organization analysing data on fossil fuel subsidies in Canada, there is a conservative estimate: the combined federal, provincial, and territorial fossil fuel subsidies in Canada total at least $4.8 billion annually in 2018 and 2019, and most were given by provincial and territorial governments. Federal subsidies tend to take the form of grants, but provincial and territorial subsidies are often from tax programs such as waivers and breaks as well as uncollected or under-collected resource rents or royalties
Source: Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Canada: Governance Implications in the Net-Zero Transition by the Canada Climate Law Initiative
These are simply about explicit funding by different government bodies in Canada. However, there are larger implicit annual subsidies (externalities born by government, society and the environment which tend to be completely ignored by most vested interest) of:
US$ 36 billion
Source: IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update; annex III. Total (Explicit and Implicit) Subsidies
Compared to the portion of government funding received by CBC•Radio-Canada annual report (2022-2023, p.27) :
Government funding: This year, operating funding was $1,174.9 million, capital funding recognized in income was $92.9 million and working capital was $4.0 million
I dont mind cutting funding/subsidies where there is inefficiency/mismanagement. However, shouldn’t we start with the most obvious mismanagement? Why does our government pay subsidies (not loans, not investments, not shares, which I completely excluded for my comparison above) for large very profitable multi-national corporation?
You may have misunderstood my focus, I agree that current nuclear reactors are designed with utmost safety and redundancy on top of redundancy. However, all those safety measures multiply feasibility, development and operating costs while also increasing the surface area of things that may be mismanaged/ignored/forgotten and not be immediately detected by external auditor/inspector if there is any at all.
As I have written previously:
Theorically, we all know and understand that following all the baseline protocols and maintenance schedules rigorously will keep a nuclear fission power plant working without environmental/health/safety issues for its entire entended life cycle.
Obviously, I absolutly hope and want nuclear technology to develop further. However, I do not think currently available options are cost effective and durably suitable for a world of increasing climate change perturbations. Governments, institutions and organizations will be stretched thin and thinner by multiple factors while increasing demands and sequences of societal and climatic events will test their ever changing priorities.
Nevertheless, one fission technology that may show promise in an increasingly turbulent world are small self-contained reactors. From my understanding, they are deployed in situ and buried providing energy to a nearby facility until its fuel has reached a predetermined end-of-life cycle. The self-contained reactor is then dug out and replaced by a new one while the EOL reactor is returned to be “recycled” and redeployed elsewhere. It seems simpler, hopefully also cost effective and a smaller safety concern overall.
As you have also pointed out with Fukushima having been slated to be decommissioned, political prerogative pushes thing far beyond what was intended. Be it old bridges collapsing way beyond their lifespan, or old submarines killing their crew from a fire onboard, or old fleet of gas guzzling trucks still belching a mix of burnt and unburned fuel particles, the list goes on forever. Even if we built the safest, most redundant, almost completely automated nuclear power plant that could last a hundred or two hundred years, how future governments deals with the decommission is entirety subject to their whims and changing political context.
And we can already witness hiccups of various degrees in every single countries since even before the pandemic, with changing political situation due to several interconnected factors in which climate change is a threat multiplier.
Nuclear fission based reactors should be left for beyond Earth’s orbit; for space exploration, space mining, etc.
On earth, it’s more of a liability with multiple security/safety concerns that engineers, architects, scientists and risk management specialists have to contend with, thus making any project exponentially and unnecessarily more expensive. Theorically, we all know and understand that following all the baseline protocols and maintenance schedules rigorously will keep a nuclear fission power plant working without environmental/health/safety issues for its entire entended life cycle.
However, we live in an imperfect world where important things gets postponed, rescheduled, ignored out of inconvenience, forgotten due to changing priorities or changes in personnel/chain of command, or mismanaged simply due to political interference/apathy/nepotism/ignorance. All this is internal to its regular operation.
Externally, we have to constantly/actively monitor and react to natural disasters, accidents, terrorism, climate change (e.g. input water temperature), etc. So as to ensure operational integrity at all time.
In contrast, nuclear fusion based reactors have the potential to solve alone all our energy needs for the foreseeable future in a carbon neutral (even carbon negative) manner. However, the resources assigned to make a scientific breakthrough in that field is largely insufficient if not scrawny/famished. It is indeed several magnitudes more expensive, supply chain constrained (special custom equipments and parts), rife with delays, constantly over budget all while still trying to understand the fundamental science with experiments and scientists spread throughout the four corners of the planet.
We could accelerate the progress towards nuclear fusion power plants similarly to how we accelerated COVID-19 vaccine research & production, but it will require several times more financing into each potential fusion reactors designs and each of their successive prototypes (tokamak, stellarator, spherical tokamak, inertial confinement, liquid metal mediated magnetized target fusion, magneto-inertial fusion, etc…)
I’m from Québec and fluent in both French and English (spoken and written).
I went through an exclusively French curriculum (with interspersed English and Spanish classes in both high school and cegep). University was mostly in English.
At home, we spoke mostly in 2 other languages (still speak well enough but unfortunately I never learned to write in) with both sides of the family, with English as a go between when needed.
I was nowhere any good in any of my language classes, frequently zeroes (out of 10 or 100) in written quizzes and tests (I tended to write phonetically). I don’t know how I (barely) passed without ever failing a single class 🤣. I am better now, probably out of lifelong practice.
I was way better, if not excellent, in mathematics, physics, chemistry and most sciences in general.
What probably helped was my continuous daily immersion in both French and English with friends, family, coworkers, colleagues, clients, neighbors and also through shows, movies, music, books, journals, contracts and various projects.
Although, nowadays, I personnaly feel (false impression perhaps) like my English vocabulary is vastly larger than my French one.
I wonder if there are information or anonymised statistics regarding the portion of elected representatives, senators and members of the judiciary from municipal, provincial and federal bodies/institutions that own more than a property (principal residence).
How many properties? What type of properties (from residential single family to high rise residential appartments/condominium, from empty/rundown/abandoned farmhouses/buildings to unused farm/land, etc…) What purpose do they have for those properties? Do those properties generate some kind of revenue? If so, how much? How is the revenue generated?
While thinking about it, how much of all properties in Canada are tied up behind a corporate veil by companies/fondations/trusts and various legal entities? Are there statistics on that?
There are too many unknowns and legal protections behind those unknown to be able to make a clear picture of the housing crisis.
I don’t want the scapegoat excuse of too much RED TAPE to build new housing or that IT’S THE IMMIGRANTS and the FOREIGN WORKERS or FOREIGN INVESTORS/SPECULATORS took all our housing. That’s too easy of a excuse to avoid the real and difficult work of understanding this whole mess.
I want real data, not proxy data. Full information on every transfer of property; from whom to whom, by which financial institution, for exactly how much, timespan elapsed between transfer of ownership, who is the mortgage holder if a loan is involved, renovation details if there has been any, every inspection report and details should always be public and attached to the property for the life of the property as a historical snapshot of the property, etc…
It’s not that hard to implement these data gathering services but there are always deeply vested interests that would do everything in their power to discourage such endeavors and make up any excuse to avoid providing it.
Anyways, sorry this became a long rambling rant on my part.
With more and more people affected directly or indirectly by (flash) floods, forest fires and irregular droughts, no amount of “advertising” and “public relation” will assuage mobs of angry/desperate/displaced individuals from seeking irrational forms of justice that could never reasonably make their life whole again for all that was lost.
Moreover, we will enter (have already) a period whereas politicians will find it more and more acceptable to misdirect our woes/anger toward, at first, individuals/groups/corporations/countries unrelated to the causes of climate change as convenient scapegoat. Eventually as things progress (as in decline/worsen/degenerate), they will ultimately find themselves only viably electable by repudiating anyone/anything directly or even barely related to the fossil fuel industry.
Advertising / lobbying is one of their last attempt to avoid accountability.
Nevertheless, advertising and lobbying will never decrease the many real/visible/lived/experienced consequences of climate change.
Great list. In my area, I only need to avoid Maxi and Provigo.
There are so many small “dépanneurs” and specialty grocery stores.
They all have amaizing deals on their niche products:
Every speciaty store has their own fresh produces from typical fruits and vegetables we see everywhere to uniques ones found nowhere else.