I feel like video rolling onto the scene was the beginning of the end. I don't like video as a medium, so that's an easy place for me to draw the line. Before Youtube&co link zines and blogs would link to other readable stuff. Sometimes it had pictures, but it was complex and thought out (usually). Over time, as monetization become more of a thing, Youtube became more of a thing, along with influencers and unskipable ads. And here we are.
Developers wanted to build and deploy apps to end user machines. The round trip for page loads was lousy for usability.
Java applets were too shitty. Flash was too janky and hard to work with. So Mozilla started adding JavaScript as a hack. It filled a need.
a barrier-to-entry that makes it difficult to develop new browsers,
It definitely adds a barrier to entry, but JavaScript was really perfected in chromium, which is a different codebase from the folks who proposed and built js to begin with.
I'm not saying JavaScript is good, but it fills a need.
This seems like a fairly consistent story we hear about the RCMP. It seems like there's a regular release of studies showing mismanagement, a toxic culture, and favoritism. The two that stand out are the missing women enquiry in Vancouver (which included the RCMP and Vancouver Police), and the Nova Scotia mass shooter enquiry.
This one doesn't include incompetence, poor training, or sexual harassment though.
Agreed. She defrauded refugees. I feel like Canada has generally treated newcomers and existing citizens poorly, but this feels like a new low.
The 15th Federated will remember our sacrifice at the Battle of the Erie. As long as there's a Fifteenth, we'll live on. o7
Cyberpunk is a critique and warning about hypercapitalism with cool aesthetics and technology. Somehow we ended up with zero aesthetics, meh technology, and we're far down the road to actual factual shit down your throat hypercapitalism.
I always try to end depressing comments with something positive, but I can't think of anything. Hug your favourites, and good luck in the Climate Wars.
> As first reported by CBC Hamilton in 2023, and according to subsequent LSO investigations, Bruyn has a pattern of promising to help clients successfully navigate Canada's complicated refugee process, but then failed to complete their applications, show up for hearings or submit evidence, and in some cases lied about it.
...
> In two other cases, clients paid her a total of $10,500 in fees without completing any work and Bruyn never provided refunds, LSO lawyer Kristin Bailey said at the hearing.
...
> Bruyn didn't submit any evidence on behalf of her client, even after the Refugee Protection Division gave her an extension, said the LSO. As a result, the woman's refugee claim was denied. Bruyn told her she'd file an appeal, but never did. > > The woman was almost deported back to Mexico, but a new lawyer, retained through a local refugee organization, intervened and helped her get a temporary resident permit, said Ushirode's affidavit. She's currently applying for more permanent status.
What's she doing now? Surely she isn't in a position to harm others:
> She told the panel she isn't opposing her licence being suspended. She's no longer practising law and was appointed as an adjudicator to Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board last year, but is on a leave of absence.
They're pretty awful, but the stats in the article don't support your assertion:
In Scarborough and increasingly here, those businesses are often diaspora-owned. They’re cultural and community hubs offering personal services, groceries, restaurants and more. In Toronto, there are more than 200 of these strip plazas (as they’re called there) that are 97% occupied right now. They depend on that plentiful parking to serve customers coming from across the city, and the space tends to be affordable.
...
Those small enterprises are likely going to be challenged to afford the rents in a brand new, modern building. Even if they can secure a lease in the new building when it’s completed they’ll certainly struggle to find affordable space in which to temporarily re-locate during construction.
Typically, an abstraction maintains the essence of the original. Asking "what if <good thing>, but it costs <bad thing>" isn't an abstraction.
I'm not aware of a proposed solution to climate change that involves mass torture or murder.
The question feels more like one of those terrible parlor games where you have to pick a few cards and then argue some randomly generated point.
The expansion of commercial activity into residential neighbourhoods to offer alternatives to expensive main street locations
More of this. Local hubs please.
Mmm very wise
Isn't there a relationship between the road surface material, angle, width, and surrounds that dictates a safe speed range?
I don't know that I would agree that newcomers are necessarily getting screwed, not anymore than anyone else anyway. And I think that's why I have worked with so many. (Corporate greeeeeed)
Agreed, I think they're getting the same lousy experience the rest of us are: food and housing are expensive, the job market can be tough.
I do have first hand experience in this place so I feel comfortable offering an opinion
Thanks for posting. It's good to see that many immigrants are still finding Canada to be preferable to their home.
This is the crux of blaming immigrants for low wages, if the wages didn't suck already then you wouldn't have so many immigrants coming here. That's not on them, that's on domestic policy and employers fucking everyone over.
Happily, I don't think many people here are blaming immigrants for the system that's taking advantage of them. Most of the comments I've seen on Lemmy get that this is a policy failure by our governments, and that newcomers are getting screwed.
It's interesting because the new exhibit is about the history of the park, rather than the Confederates.
In 2021, the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, a governor-appointed commission that oversees the park, agreed to move prominent Confederate flags and install an exhibit about the park’s origins and history, including Ku Klux Klan cross-burnings that happened at the site over the years. Allen-Clausell thinks that context will go a long way.
...
The drive for a Confederate memorial on Stone Mountain dates to the early 20th century, when Civil War monuments were going up in public places around the country. The effort for one at Stone Mountain gained traction when the KKK relaunched during a mountaintop ceremony on Thanksgiving night 1915, inspired by the film “Birth of a Nation,” which glorified the Reconstruction-era Klan.
The Globe has a great editorial on immigration and infrastructure:
> a “hard rule” in which population intake does not exceed the growth in the housing stock, the job market and the availability of doctors. > > There is merit to that approach, although the emphasis should be on using permanent residency as a tool to ease shortages of specific skills, such as doctors.
Housing advocates (like Mike Moffat) have been calling for that kind of linkage for years. The bad news? It's Poilievre that's suggesting it. Here's hoping Lemmy and Canadian politicians can take the idea and run with it, despite the current advocate.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-right-fix-for-immigration-pierre-poilievre-ottawa/
Limits on foreign students and new permanent residents influencing rental demand in some major cities, report finds
The article has a loooooong list of rent decreases in major metros across the country. Generally, we're seeing decreases that seem to erase the increase from the same period in 2024.
> Over the past year, the average asking monthly rent fell between 2 per cent and 8 per cent in condos and rental-only apartments – also known as purpose-built rentals – said the report released Tuesday by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp (CMHC). > > The drop was due to a surge in new condos and apartment buildings hitting the market along with limits on temporary foreign residents such as students and new permanent residents.
...
> “It is quite evident on the demand side that there have been signs of weakening,” said Tania Bourassa-Ochoa, CMHC’s deputy chief economist, adding that there were stronger rental declines in regions with slower population growth.
https://archive.is/wosmf
Since Toronto reneged on its sixplex agreement, Ottawa should follow through with pulling federal housing funds
The housing crisis is screwing generations of Canadians. Toronto City council is enabling it.
The feds need to call out Toronto's bad faith negotiations and withdraw the promised funds.
(The feds also need to change tax laws to definancialize housing, enforce money laundering laws, build affordable housing, etc - but I digress)
> In 2023, Toronto city council voted in support of an agreement signed with Ottawa, pledging a variety of policy changes that included allowing buildings with six housing units on a single lot anywhere in the city. Federal money allocated from the Housing Accelerator Fund started to flow in return and then, during a debate last month, a lot of councillors got cold feet. > > Instead of voting to allow the sixplexes they had pledged to permit everywhere, council watered down the proposal. In fact, they took a fire hose to it. These buildings will be allowed in only nine wards, which together make up less than one-quarter of the city’s area. Councillors for the other 16 wards can opt in later, as if they are mayors of their own area.
https://archive.is/DoPVJ
Ministers have been instructed to cut 7.5 per cent from program spending next year, growing to 15 per cent by 2028-29
> Federal cabinet ministers are being asked to find ... ways to reduce program spending by 7.5 per cent in the fiscal year that begins April 1, 2026, followed by 10 per cent in savings the next year and 15 per cent in the 2028-29 fiscal year.
I'm getting 90s vibes. Government cutbacks, threats of separation, climate change. It's all here.
But there's a modern twist: we're talking about 3C change in 2100, there's a housing crisis, our media landscape is dominated by tech bros, and the US is lost in the culture wars.
> "At that time, I was pregnant with my first kid," she said. "I lived in a two-room apartment … it was an OK building, but it was small for us." > > [She] went to an online portal, entered her income and requirements, and was ranked alongside thousands of other residents. Soon, she was assigned a new apartment: a three-bedroom unit in a brand-new building, adjacent to Vienna's Central Station. > > "I love it. It's in the middle of Vienna," she said. "A lot of young families moved in at the same time…. There's a big campus here, with a kindergarten and primary school. There's dancing classes, and a boulder bar, and a huge park." > > [She] wasn't desperate to find housing. She and her partner earned middle-class incomes. But in recent years, Vienna has become renowned among housing experts for its model of social housing, which provides heavily subsidized rental units to more than half of the city's two million residents.
The key is taking profit out of construction (at least 96.5%), and a robust government that isn't afraid to impinge on the private sector.
I would love to see something like this in Canada, but I don't think our politicians (or electorate) have the guts.
Here's my theory: Carney dropped the DST because of supply management on dairy. My evidence is sparse, but:
> Last month, the U.S. and Britain announced a trade deal related to a range of products. But Britain’s 2-per-cent DST was not affected.
(From the Globe)
That shows other countries have a DST but that hasn't been a sticking point in trade negotiations.
Meanwhile, Quebec really likes supply management:
> 83 per cent of Quebecers want governments to do everything in their power to protect the country’s supply management system.
During the next election, Carney will probably need Quebec's support to stay in power. By giving up the DST, Carney may be able to keep supply management for dairy, and avoid alienating Quebec voters.
I guess we'll see during the final negotiations. Do our dairy farmers get to keep their protections?
Today’s Canadian dream is to make the next mortgage payment without having to borrow it
> Fifty-two per cent of us worry a lot about our personal finances. Fifty per cent feel frustrated, 47 per cent feel emotionally drained and 43 per cent feel depressed. There is not one survey indicator to suggest Canadians have made financial progress in 2025 compared with 2024.
...
> Our debt-to-household disposable income has bumped up against nearly 200 per cent for years now, putting Canada in first place among G7 countries. Canada’s is 185 per cent; the average for all G7 countries is 125 per cent according to Statistics Canada. Canadian households collectively owe about $3-trillion, almost three-quarters of it is mortgage debt.
...
> Today’s Canadian dream is to make the next mortgage payment without having to borrow it. The housing crisis hasn’t just hobbled the hopes of many Canadians seeking affordable housing; it is undercutting middle-class living standards.
...
> That thinking of retirement provokes anxiety in surveys on the matter shouldn’t be surprising. It is one more item on a growing list of aspirations many Canadians cannot afford.
Shortly after Doug Ford's new cabinet was sworn in and Mark Carney became prime minister, Ottawa and Queen's Park signed off on a deal to work together on new housing.
> “The targets and outcomes for funding available under the agreement were mutually agreed upon in March 2025 through a three-year Action Plan for 2025/26 to 2027/28. This ensures the continued availability of federal funding for Ontario.” > > Flack’s office indicated he wanted to reset the relationship with his federal counterpart after a tense year. The latest agreement will prioritize rent-assisted units, according to the Ontario government.
I didn't see an explanation of the action plan in the article. Progress on rent-assisted units is great.
TD isn't fixing its money laundering problem because of Canadian penalties, but because the US regulator wouldn't put up with their shit:
> It had become clear TD needed a new leadership team to usher in the sweeping changes required to fix its anti-money-laundering failures, which in October resulted in U.S. regulators announcing more than US$3-billion in fines by the Department of Justice and a host of non-monetary penalties that will carve deep trenches in the bank for years to come.
Money laundering has pushed up costs in our real estate sector and enabled the drug crisis. It's bizarre that we haven't done more to stop it.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-td-bank-raymond-chun-ceo/
Warm lights, tactile buttons, intuitive usage.
The Eight Laws of Robotics Calmness:
> 1. Technology should require the smallest possible amount of attention. > 2. Technology should inform and create calm. > 3. Technology should make use of the periphery. > 4. Technology should amplify the best of technology and the best of humanity. > 5. Technology can communicate, but doesn’t need to speak. > 6. Technology should work even when it fails. > 7. The right amount of technology is the minimum needed to solve the problem. > 8. Technology should respect social norms.
I'm a little suspicious about a certification body that's paid for by producers, but it's fine if they can make it work.
Interesting podcast about the measles outbreaks in Alberta and Ontario. I got:
- The outbreaks are primarily among unvaccinated Mennonite communities.
- Heard immunity (thanks to vaccination) among the general population has prevented exposures from turning into infections.
- Provincial health ministries are avoiding talking about Mennonites because they want to avoid stigmatization.
- Provincial health ministries aren't holding regular briefings for political reasons.
But it's a podcast (and I'm too lazy to read the transcript) so maybe I got some of that stuff wrong.
Edit: Fixed the link to the transcript. Thanks @DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca!
In version 0.1.4, mods can now configure the repost-bot to watch a community and complain when a user reposts an image too often. The mod configures the community by PMing the bot with something along the lines of
json {"https://sh.itjust.works/c/repostbot_comm": { "action": "comment", "minRepostIntervalSeconds": 60, "allowRepostsFromOtherCommunities": false }}
You can see an example of this groundbreaking behaviour here.
Next up: adding reporting and removal of posts.
> Former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page said there isn’t enough time left before the summer recess for the government to produce a full budget with new policy announcements, but he said the Liberals should at least produce a fiscal update before the summer that shows where things currently stand. He said campaign platforms didn’t fully account for the various U.S. tariff moves that have disrupted the Canadian economy. > > “They are out of date,” said Mr. Page, who is now president and chief executive officer of the University of Ottawa’s Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy. “Parliament will be asked to approve spending authorities without a reasonable planning framework.”
and lil context:
> Federal governments almost always release a budget early in the year. One rare exception was in 2020, during the pandemic, when the government didn’t table one. > > The absence of a budget would leave Canadians without a clear picture of the new government’s spending plan, or how recent economic events have affected Ottawa’s bottom line.
Original: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-new-energy-minister-hodgson-planning-western-canada-trip-as-carneys/
I think Kershaw is trolling in this op-ed, but it's hard to tell. He's saying that the $14 billion planned increase to OAS for seniors will subsidize many people who are already well off. So he suggests younger Canadians (who don't get to participate in the housing market) should get a similar amount:
> Millennials and Gen Z deserve a greater share of the $1.5-trillion windfall generated by rising home values since boomers were young adults. > > A $1,000 annual payment to every adult aged 18 to 39 would be a start. The simplest way to deliver this compensation would be through a refundable tax credit, claimed when young people file their annual returns. Governments seeking more visible credit might directly deposit $250 every three months into young people’s bank accounts, clearly labelled as a housing wealth dividend. > > I know $1,000 doesn’t stretch far in today’s housing market. It may only cover a few weeks of rent or mortgage payments. But over 21 years, that same annual payment adds up to real money that can help with costs.
Of course, there are less spendy alternatives:
> Options include eliminating outdated Age and Pension Income tax shelters, which could pay for half the cost. The other half could come from beginning the Old Age Security clawback at $100,000 of household income, rather than continuing to provide the full $18,000 subsidy to retired couples with $180,000 in income.
I think Kershaw is using the $1,000 per year "you were born too young to get a house" tax rebate as an illustration of the amount of cash going to retirees. But maybe he isn't.
Original: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/young-money/article-carneys-housing-fix-needs-a-dividend-for-millennials-and-gen-z/