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Cake day: Jun 02, 2023

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And also probably some chunk of those views are from bots or otherwise not real trying to boost engagement metrics and game the algorithm


None of this is a likely threat, but is any of it completely outside the realm of feasibility?

Yes. It’s well beyond being worth considering. You’re describing a massive conspiracy where hundreds of people from multiple countries’ governments as well as private corporations would all need to work together without any information leakage. All this to entrap some Canadian programmer who tried to torrent season 2 of a TV show aired in 1990. If any of this was worth doing, it would have been done by now, yet we hear of nothing like this ever happening.

I’ve gone my entire adult life downloading copyrighted material without using a VPN and it’s never caused me any problem. My contract with my ISP confers me a level of trust that I’m perfectly comfortable with. I’m familiar with the Canadian law around this stuff, and how it’s been interpreted by the courts in the past. I am under no threat of financial damages being pursued against me. My ISP has no incentive to log my online activity or report it to foreign authorities. And even if they did, the Canadian courts limit the pursuable damages to four figures; barely enough to pay for the lawyer that would file the suit.


That level of paranoia is a waste of energy. I know that what I’m doing works just fine. Why would some Hollywood studio plant CSAM in a torrent? That would implicate them as well. It makes zero sense. They have better things to do than entrap some nobody in a country whose laws don’t favour them seeking any damages. It would cost them far more in legal fees to come after me than to just leave it alone. The notices they send out are entirely automated and exist primarily as a scare tactic.

If you’re willing to be curious and open minded about things beyond your limited perception and experience, rather than be a know-it-all, I’d be happy to share with you an example email that I recieved recently. I think the language they use is quite interesting.


The law in Canada limits the ISP’s risk exposure and the pursuable damages of the rightsholder. Also it definitely would cost them if they told me “we have not responded to this notice from the rightsholder” and then turned around and did exactly that. That would be a flat out lie to their client. I’d have grounds to sue in a situation like that.

Also, I’ve been doing this for almost a decade and never had any problems. Maybe you shouldn’t assume that your situation is everyone’s situation.


Your ISP has the same access to your data, but they also have a payment account linked to you, and they regularly cooperate with rights holders and law enforcement.

This varies widely by ISP and jurisdiction. I never use a VPN and my ISP doesn’t give a fuck what I download. They forward me the scary letters from the rights holders but they always preface it with “don’t worry, we ain’t no snitch”


Yeah it’s one thing to say “idk what I saw but maybe it was something”. It’s quite another to say that what he’s saying is the truth and if you don’t believe him then you’re calling him a liar. Sounds like something a liar would say.


I tend to notice that it’s only fascists that try to promote their agenda in other countries.

That is definitely not the case. All sides of the political spectrum try to push their views in other countries. John Oliver, a British American media personality, urged Canadians to vote for Trudeau in 2015 on his show.



Even right wing economists agree that carbon tax is the best way to do it. The only case against it is a climate change denial case. It uses the laws of economics to attack the problem of climate change at the source. The issue is whether the tax rate is right and whether we allow corpos to buy “offset credits” that are actually worthless.


“Increasing competition” without lowering prices is meaningless.

Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me you know nothing about economics. The effect of increasing competition in a heavily monopolized industry is to lower prices.

Edit: I slightly misread the quoted text. I had assumed that “increasing competition” meant breaking up Canadian monopolies, not opening the floodgates to other markets. I’m really surprised that a party called “Canada future” is against protectionism. I still stand by my point here, but I see where you’re coming from.


Hopefully the fact that this was a national park that was affected will make the federal government start considering a federal wildfire fighting program.


Damn, you’re right. It makes total sense now.

BTW I love your username. If only there were some way to make money off it!


No, I get what you’re saying, I’m just saying that the name for the thing you’re describing, where some fantastical premise is extended logically using more realistic science, is “science fiction”.





How I read this poll: 55% of Canadians want a party to the political left of the Conservatives to win.

How our FPTP system reads this poll: 70% of ridings want the Conservatives to win.


I don’t disagree with most of what you’ve said here, but in what way is Trudeau a “technocrat”? The main conservative critique of him before his election was that his previous work was as a teacher and that he was too young to lead the country. One of his big claims to fame has been appointing cabinet positions based on identity rather than aptitude. I don’t see how you could claim that he’s a “technocrat”. He’s a fairly run-of-the-mill politician.

If anything, Harper had a better claim to the title of “technocrat” since he had a background in economics, although he then went on to fill his cabinet with people who viewed the government as a stolen car in a chop-shop, so he wasn’t really a technocrat either.


What do you mean “backgrounds”? And what are the letters indicating?



I know years ago, there was interest in reporting/cleaning up suspiciously dead birds too. Not sure what the current direction on that is now.

What exactly makes a dead bird sus?


I’ve never been clear on what exactly the mitigation is for WNV. It’s not like you can prevent mosquitoes biting you. Often you don’t even know it’s happening. What exactly are you supposed to do?

The article says “don’t get bit” but thats basically impossible if you enjoy the outdoors, especially in more wooded areas like northern Ontario. You can’t just wear a full body bug net the whole time. I mean I guess you could but it’d be miserable.


You’re misreading that comma. It is listing companies the suit is against. “Loblaw and the Weston companies” is one list item, “Walmart Canada” is another, etc.


I’ve been with them since they were called Wind. Always been satisfied, but since they merged with Videotron my experience with them has gotten even better.


Aren’t the proposed tents in Ottawa meant to house incoming legal refugees? Like a temporary place when they first arrive until they can get set up somewhere permanent. That’s my understanding.


The classic Liberal playbook. They know what would make a real positive impact on people’s lives, but rather than doing it, they save it until the last moment before the election and then promise it will become a thing during their next term. Kathleen Wynne did the same thing with pharmacare before losing to Ford, who rolled back all of her programs. Imagine if Liberals governed their entire terms the way they govern in the last year before getting ousted.



Global Affairs Canada was forced to admit it was behind the purchase after some New York real estate gossip reported that the condo deal was done for King Charles himself.

The deed for the property shows it was listed for more than US$6.6 million and was sold last month to “His Majesty the King in right of Canada.”

Pretty funny that the only reason this got out is because we use such an ostentatious phrase to refer to the legal entity of the Crown. It’s pretty mundane if you work in the government, but I can see how a bunch of New York real estate agents would have no idea what that phrase means.


Our politicians have been importing the US’s politics for ages, even when it doesn’t apply to us


No offense, but that’s because you live in a bubble. The majority of Canadians generally land on the neoliberal part of the political compass right now. That’s not to say they can’t be convinced to vote differently, but there’s a reason why the red team and the blue team have been dominant for such a long time.

FWIW, I live in a bubble too. Lots of the people I interact with are orange liberals or red NDPers. However I would say even more are people who fundamentally agree with the NDP more than any other party, but have been brainwashed into thinking the Liberals represent their views better than any other party.


Yes, and as we’ve seen, when you make changes to education which are intended to push a specific political agenda, it always galvanizes opponents of that agenda to go out and vote. So we need to be very careful how that sort of thing is handled.


I don’t doubt that. All I said is that it’s not a panacea. As I said, I would be very happy for PR to be a thing here. Once you make the government more proportional, you then need to actually make everyone give a shit about fixing problems. To get everyone pulling in the same direction on some of these issues is going to be an extremely uphill battle.

A significant chunk of Canadians think we are currently doing too much to mitigate climate change, that we should not endorse urbanist policies in our city planning or transportation infrastructure, and that we should reduce social programs that help people with addictions.


True, but you have to remember that a decent percentage of voters disagree with everything you said in your above comment. Just because our democracy becomes healthier, doesn’t mean our lawmakers wouldn’t still make dumb policy.


I would love to see PR implemented, but it’s not a panacea. It might reduce the conservatives representation in parliament but the Liberals would still be a strong party under PR. The Liberals set most of the existing climate targets and policy, and they are insufficient because the Liberals are a neoliberal party. They are fundamentally opposed to short term economic loss as a political ideology. They won’t invest in the sort of measures needed to mitigate climate change.


Ah, I just love when successful government programs are cancelled overnight out of spite for the citizens of the province.


Given how hostile most streets are to cyclists, this is basically like the suicide booth in Futurama.


Protip for him: if you build enough homes, you won’t have to build encampments


Yes even if your supervisor is bilingual, it’s still possible that your office has a dominant language by virtue of the majority.

But anyone who works in IT knows that the price of entry is knowing a certain amount of English, so I would be surprised that IT workers are the ones complaining. They wouldn’t have completed whatever postsecondary taught them IT without learning the basics in English. It’s baked into the industry. Like how biologists need to learn Latin names.


Being bilingual is a metric for hiring, so some people who can say “Jim apple George” or “monet es George” will call themselves bilingual. So knowing enough to be hired, and knowing enough to actually do the job are two different things.

For rank and file this is true, but there is a certification process for supervisors.

But I can see the other points being relevant, especially about technical jargon with colleagues. I guess I’m lucky that almost everyone I work with knows enough of both languages to flip back and forth as needed. The french training in my dept is excellent.


Louis Rossman/FUTO’s YouTube app, GrayJay, now supports Sponsorblock… and shames you if you use it
Seriously this was very surprising. I've been experimenting with GrayJay since it was announced and I largely think it's a pretty sweet app. I know there are concerns over how it isn't "true open source" but it's a hell of a lot more open than ReVanced. Plus, I like the general design and philosophy of the app. I updated the YouTube backend recently and to my surprise and delight they had added support for SponsorBlock. However, when I went to enable it, it warned me "turning this on harms creators" and made me click a box before I could continue. Bruh, you're literally an ad-blocking YouTube frontend. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to be facilitating ad-blocking and then at the same time shame the end-user for using an extension which simply automates seeking ahead in videos. Are you seriously gonna tell me that even without Sponsorblock, if I skip ahead past the sponsored ad read in a video, that I'm "harming the creator"?
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