Earlier this month the government changed one of its rules on mortgage payments, allowing first-time buyers or people purchasing a newly-built home to take loans with 30-year amortizations, instead of 25 years.

Although the move is intended to lower monthly payments and make home ownership affordable to more people, critics say it may have opposite effect by boosting demand and raising prices.

It’s hard to see how this won’t increase prices and costs for buyers. It clearly benefits lenders, but everyone else will pay more.

We knew it was wrong in the 90s, which is why edgelords like this dude (and Trudeau) were into it.

Kinda surprising that this comment got downvotes on this video.

His ideas aren’t monetizable. They’re a throwback to the golden age when tools and utilities were built for passion or need.

Now, tooling is built by for-profit corporations. It satisfies users enough that there isn’t enough room for passion projects. For-profit tooling tends to get usability right.

Look at the fediverse: it’s a workable system that users would be fine with, if more usable for-profit alternatives didn’t exist.

Eby said the 40 per cent from the province is not a grant or ongoing subsidy, but financing that is to be repaid at the end of 25 years, or when the owner sells.

Is that an exclusive or an inclusive “or”?

Counterpoint: before Gmail, I ran my own mail server and futzed with Mutt for a perfect email experience. It was a frustrating time sink.

Gmail came out and I now get a better end-user experience with virtually no cost of ownership. I’m comfortable with the ad-supported model. I’d prefer a low monthly fee, but not so much that it’s worth moving to Proton. Eventually, maybe I will.

I get this take, but it isn’t for me.

Now you would likely be fired if you refused to use Teams or Slack or whatever your company uses.

Why would I refuse? It’s company software running on company hardware. It isn’t my problem what the ToS is.

I’m not sure it’s devil’s advocate: I work with computers for 40 hours a week. There’s no way that I want to put any effort into a computer in my personal time

I tried Gemini and it periodically failed to set timers and reminders. When I asked it the date next Tuesday, it got the answer wrong. 🤷‍♂️

yes yes, but the robot cannot strike, you see, because one robot must make the strike motion, another robot must second the strike motion, and then all the robots must vote. if there is no robot to second the strike motion, then no robots may vote, meaning the strike cannot pass.

That’s horrific. I hope the kid is able to make a full recovery. And that we take this as a wake up call - stories like this feel like a warning about the state of our healthcare system.

How do you market an encryption platform exclusively to criminals?

Apparently through word of mouth and suggestions by undercover agents.

innocents that downloaded this as a secure messaging system

The app wasn’t made available for download. The FBI bought a few thousand Pixels, flashed a custom ROM onto them, and then installed the messaging apps. In theory they cost thousands of dollars to buy.

It’s entirely possible some innocents used the system, but it’s unclear how selling rooted hardware to alleged criminals would induce them to commit crime.

See https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/1197959218/fbi-phone-company-anom

Entrapment techniques like that make me sick.

What was the entrapment? The FBI sold phones to suspected criminals and monitored the conversations, didn’t they?

I agree, but we also need to lower our GHG emissions. Since we refuse to improve urban planning or transit, EVs are a step in the right direction.

That’s definitely a thing too. I’m not sure it changes the trajectory of his career though.

If the PRC hadn’t meddled, and O’Toole took the 10-ish ridings he alleged were subverted (which seems like a bit of a stretch), the Conservatives still wouldn’t have been able to form government.

I think Poilievre’s revolt did more to turf O’Toole than the PRC.

From what I’ve seen, Poilievre hasn’t been nearly as hawkish on China, so the PRC certainly got lucky on that one.

Singh wasn’t the intended audience for the letter, voters were. I’m guessing it was mostly aimed at Poilievre’s base, but maybe it was intended to catch some others too.

Compared to most of the leadership alternatives, he was good. I appreciate that he didn’t want to pander to the Poilievre base.

His overthrow was inevitable. In retrospect, at least.

His resignation tour was really interesting. He went on a rant against social media-led politicking and (iirc) kinda/sorta called for a return to big tent parties.

AFAICT the federal daycare deal, dental care, measures to address the housing crisis, and price on carbon were implemented by negotiating/cajoling the provinces. Generally speaking, I believe those were mostly successful initiatives that help Canadians.

FWIW, this announcement deals solely with temporary foreign workers - I don’t believe there’s an easy path for a TFW to become a permanent resident.

The expansions in TFW policy are definitely corporate-friendly, in the sense that they suppress wages. They also discourage businesses from improving productivity, which has long been a problem for the Canadian economy.

Rail workers were not on strike. They were locked out by their employers.

Edit: I stand corrected