I choose not to think about it or include it in my mental threat model, the same way I choose to not worry about thermonuclear warheads.

If there’s some exploitable backdoor and Intel gets owned, we’re all boned and there’s nothing we can really do about it. I don’t have anti-ballistic-missile systems, and I also don’t have the capability to make an entire hardware/firmware/os from scratch.

So instead focus on the things you can control and are more likely to happen. Don’t plan for doomsday, plan for every day.

Can’t upvote this enough. It’s not the consumers, it’s the dealers calling the shots. Some examples:

Looking for a Corolla hybrid: no dealer had one, and all of them said it could be 18 months or more before one would be available

Looking for a RAV4 suv: we have 8 on the lot take your pick

Looking for a Mazda 3 hatchback: the only one in the colour you want is a six hour drive away and no we can’t transfer it here

Looking for a CX5 suv: we have literally a million of them

In both examples the cars cost almost the same amount to build. They have the same drivetrain, engine, transmission, etc. But since the “suv” or “crossover” is taller and bigger they can charge 20-30% more, earning them more commission and dealer fees, so that’s what they order from the manufacturer. Unless you have months to wait, you take what you get.

It’s not perfect, but the new (2019+) mazda system is very nice. It’s all controlled by buttons and dials, zero requirement to ever touch a screen. It all feels quite thoughtfully done, especially when you compare it to fords or teslas with a big dumb laggy iPad stuck to the dash.

Local options are always better. The Mexican joint sells you a massive breakfast burrito for $6. Nepalese takeout will feed you for days for $16. Hot dog truck will fill you up with delicious processed meat for $4.

Subway? Subpar lunch made out of cardboard and ground up yoga mats for almost $20.

GOAT vehicle. It’s purely functional in pristine egg form. Bulletproof drivetrain. Comfy as hell, even by today’s standards. If one ever comes up on autotrader in good condition I’m buying one.

If we play our cards right, they might open for 2028 in LA…

I feel like “weird” misses the mark. It’s quite hurtful to people who are outside the norm and proud of it.

“Creepy” is a way better description of those guys.

It sort of does make sense, since it’s how trains work so well! A single locomotive can haul dozens of carriages way more efficiently than putting a single small motor on each carriage. It also has way less aerodynamic losses since the trailer is right in the slipstream for the truck!

The problem is that this also applies within a radius around a “port of entry”. So everybody that lives within about 100 miles of the coast, an airport, or a rail line that crosses a border — which is probably about 80+% of any country.

It’s a good week to be a Gojira fan 🤘

Well, yeah. The rate of increases is slowing, but prices are still high. There isn’t, and won’t be, deflation, that’s a catastrophically bad long term economic effect (at least, according to economists)

So it’s a $66K VW but with Ford’s awful rotary shifter thingy?

Agree. Ford’s auto braking and lane keeping in insane and dangerous. It constantly feels like somebody neurotic is reaching over from the passenger seat to grab the wheel. And sometimes it will look at a pothole or puddle and decide to stomp on the brakes. Happened only twice in about 1500km/four days, but that’s still twice too many. Car “automation” tech is still deep in its infancy.

So instead of clipping a wire you plug in a Bluetooth OBD interface and flip a bit in the car’s memory that the engineers conveniently forgot to remove which disables the beeps…

Trust me, if you go to Japan you will go to a 7-11 whether you want to or not. They are absolutely everywhere, like “ubiquitous” is an understatement. I think when we were there we went to 2-5 convenience stores per day just because they were just so… convenient…

Right, but we have ways to require all automakers to build safe vehicles, commonly known as “safety regulations” that apply to both foreign and domestic companies. The same minimum requirements apply to a Toyota built in Woodstock or a VinFast built in Vietnam. That has nothing to do with tariffs, which are just a tax on consumers on foreign imports. This has nothing to do with protecting Canadians and everything to do with protecting big business.

Do you people not put milk in your crude oil? I find it suits the subtle bitterness of Alberta tar to give it a wonderful but subtle aftertaste.

It means a lot more small scale housing and businesses will be allowed to operate. Most parking minimums specify your parking lot can accommodate something like “maximum capacity +20%” which is just absurd. I’ve never seen a full Walmart parking lot in my life, let alone the 30 spaces at most banks and 50 spaces at most pharmacies. Land is valuable, and this removes a big roadblock for reasonable construction.

Cardiff, Wales. One of the few places in the world that felt like a Real City while also having its own distinct culture and feel. Every other city I’ve been to feels like the same sort of dull corpo-district monoculture.

Old Montreal also has a bit of this, but only the central city areas, the outside periphery quickly devolves back into the “this could be anywhere in North America (version francaise)”

I wish I was the right kind of creative, greedy, and dull to come up with this kind of crap. I could scam so many bald billionaires.

If it’s cheap, sure.

Not sure I’d want to take risk management advice from the mortgage-backed securities ghouls who crashed the economy 15 years ago, but okay I guess.

When you fly on Air Canada there’s a unmutable ad for the Alberta oil sands right after the safety announcement before takeoff. It’s surreal enough, but it’ll be so much worse when they start doing this kind of shit too.

Not surprised that the guy who idolized Trump turned out to also be a nonce. As somebody who used to live in Aurora ON, fuck this guy.

I don’t need artificial intelligence in my terminal. Do you know how many times some troll has posted about “rm -fr /” on Reddit and other shitty forums, which then gets gobbled up and laundered by LLMs? Not letting that anywhere near my prod servers with valuable data.

Real estate about to go brrrrrrr. The largely landlord-represented government again looks for its own interests first.

Anecdotal… we drove through rural Ohio a few weeks ago. In several hours of travel we only saw ONE trump sign. The same place in 2016 or 2020 would have been full of them. Regardless of the impact of this, the enthusiasm is dead. There might be “maga guys” on Twitter but they’re largely disengaged in real life.

Is this a natural lake or a reservoir? I think I can see a dam and outlet near the bottom right corner. Some parts of Canada are absolutely FULL of these lakes, such as northern Quebec or parts of BC and Alberta.

Servers are 100% efficient at heating, but heat pumps are 300% efficient. Get the most energy efficient devices you can, and heat your house with a proper heat pump.

If they did this to me I would immediately drag my locked up cart to the customer service desk and return everything. Hard no. Not buying my groceries from a place that aspires to be a prison.

I wouldn’t put a lot of trust in Telegram. Not only is their cryptography off by default, it’s a bespoke hand-rolled non-standard algorithm that might not work as well as they say. Oh, and it’s been potentially backdoored by the FSB (Russia’s CIA) for six years.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/telegram-reportedly-ordered-to-share-encryption-keys-with-fsb/

It’s crazy how the US gov basically handed him a monopoly on EV charging infrastructure, something Rockefeller could have only dreamed of, and the guy throws it away less than two weeks later in some ketamine fuelled stupor. Then has to backtrack at the cost of reputation, confidence, and sentiment. Truly another great stable genius.

We need to break up the grocery conglomerates. Nowhere else in the world is the food system so heavily monopolized and vertically integrated. Go tell an American about Cara Foods/Recipe Unltd[1] — they won’t believe you!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recipe_Unlimited

Right? I’ve been using NextCloud/OwnCloud since ~2015. It’s a very standard LAMP app, nothing fancy going on at all. Give it enough memory and you’ll never have any problems, same as any other web service.

600 metres below the countryside

It’s to be stored in bedrock more than half a kilometre down, sealed in an impermeable polymer.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than oil/gas which store their waste in your lungs.

I did it back in 2020 when we all had nothing better to do. Got as far as installing X11 and Openbox, and halfway through setting up the toolchain for Firefox.

It was fun - the kind of fun digging a big hole is. It’s not for everybody, but I sort of enjoyed it.

It depends. I’d say on average it’s higher for “convenience” items but the cost of milk, cheese, rice, pantry staples, etc seems to be about the same.

If there was a food basics nearby I’d probably go there, but in my city that means driving another 15 minutes.

My wife and I have been spitefully avoiding loblaws for a while now. We get most of our meat & produce from the weekend market, bread from the local bakery, and anything else from the Asian/Indian supermarket or Metro if it can’t be found elsewhere.

The last straw was the prison gates and the receipt checking. Show some dignity.

Wow, you mean tying our entire nation’s success to a speculative real estate market was a bad idea?

A huge majority of politicians are landlords. They’re more represented than mining, tech, forestry, oil, agriculture, or any other big industry lobby group.

Rents will rise, but it’s by design.