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CBC used to be so excellent.

Now we've got a CBC that punishes those that go against their political ideology - funded by the Liberals, with people like David Cameron and Rosemary Barton choosing who gets to be on discussion panels.


Cost of living and the seemingly continuous drop in quality of life are playing a much bigger role than social media use. Trudeau's devastating policies may have done well for the pat-themselves-on-the-back-because-we're-so-great folks, but, the country is really not doing well.

Born and raised Canadian, but I lived outside of Canada in a non-OECD country for most of Trudeau's tenure, and returned a few years ago. The changes - almost all for the worse - in Canada during that period are quite astounding. And obvious to me as someone who rarely visited Canada until I moved back.

I think Canadians suffer a sort of a "boiling frog" thing, where the changes were gradual enough that they don't realize how much things have turned to crap.

My wife and I have already decided that we will leave Canada again once our son graduates high school. We stay here for him so he can be with his friends, and that is the only reason.

It's such a shame as the country truly has so much potential to be awesome, and I love the people here.


Not even close compared to Google Play and their review and appeal process.

Recently I had an app for a customer. Approved easily by Apple. Rejected by Google.

The reason given by Google was completely meaningless in the context of the app. When this happens, I usually make a bullshit change, increment the version, and submit again. That was also rejected in this case. I asked for more info and they provided a meaningless screenshot of the app - that was all. So I appealed. That was also useless! They provided no info to help.

Eventually I just created a new Google Play account and re-submitted a new version of the app, and it was accepted near immediately.

I've had some annoying experiences with Apples review process but it is gold compared to Google Play.


It was a hell of a time to be on the internet, for sure.

Security was basically non-existent or so badly implemented that it was a joke.

Some fond memories of my early teenage years:

- Causing net splits to steal ops / takeover IRC channels

- As part of a warez group, using site to site FTP transfers to move massive (at that time) amounts of warez without being limited by my 14400 modem

- How crazy easy it was to crash/DOS pretty much any computer on the internet

- Taking over company networks just for fun, and putting in backdoors that drove the sysadmins nuts

Yeah, I was a shithead teenager, and am sincerely sorry to the sysadmins I messed with, as I am a sysadmin myself now.

Eventually I ended up having many FBI-instigated meetings with the RCMP Commercial Crimes Division... They had boxes upon boxes of paper printouts from sniffing my connections.

I think I got off partially because of my age (about 14). But also the fact that the telecom company I was using had illegally sniffed incoming telnet sessions to my Linux box before there was any warrant, and had logged in using credentials they had sniffed to read many personal emails between my brother and myself, and other friends that used the system.

I realized what they were doing pretty quickly, but, I'm pretty sure their recklessness in doing that is what saved my butt in the end. This was a big crown corp telecom company.


Shaw Mobile on the other hand, did go to Rogers.


Shaw Mobile was an MVNO. It didn't have any towers or network infra. I don't think it going to Rogers reduced competition in the market.


Thankfully there's still a 3rd player running it's own mobile infrastructure.


If you mean Bell, they are near non-existent in these parts.


Networking 101 doesn't apply when you have collusion between the only two major telecom companies... and they both are bad.

Why spend money on reliability when there are no consequences of not doing so?


Yep.

Allowing Rogers to purchase Shaw was absurd.

The Commissioner of Competition was very strongly opposed to the merger, the court ruled against him, and Canadians had to pay Rogers $13 million CAD because he opposed it.

I was a Shaw Mobile (not Freedom) customer, and Rogers wanted me to drive 600km (both ways) through the Kootenay mountains in winter to get my new SIM cards. I told them where to go.

Rogers is junk and Canada is an oligarchy.


Small world - I live in the Kootenays. I am guessing you are in Nelson only because it seems to be 600km from everything :-)


Close enough though a bit more in the boonies.

They wanted me to drive to the Rogers store in Cranbrook or Kelowna.


Well next time you are in Cranbrook feel free to drop me a note if you want to grab a coffee or beer. My contact is in my profile.


Sounds good! I'm usually in Cranbrook a couple times a year.


Huh, very small world. Me too :)


I’m in Cranbrook. Perhaps we need to establish the smaller HN IRL meetup :-)


Nelson has a "tech people meetup" pretty often.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/kootenayworkers/


On Facebook? What irony.


No, that is just the page used to organize the face to face meetups


Split the difference, meet in Creston at Jimmy's Pub (pretty well equidistant from Nelson, Cranbrook, Trail). I can walk over there too.


What made Canada special died decades ago, were it not for the strict visa process I would be living in the states (Vermont) right now, with a significantly higher salary (as a principal engineer), a lower income tax, healthier housing market, lower cost of living, and better quality of life.


Funny thing, I lived outside of Canada for many years though I am Canadian born and raised. I moved my family back for a "better quality of life".

Jokes on me. ;)

I love the land and the people, but, the country itself is a mess. We have already planned our exit.


Where too? It's crossing my mind more and more lately.


What makes Canada strong is its people, whom I love very much.

I wish our gov't served us better, and I try my best to enact change, but it's a fool who thinks any country is without its faults.


I love Canadians. And Americans.

And I've lived in a few different countries in my life. No country is without faults, but, Canada right now is a mess.


>were it not for the strict visa process I would be living in the states (Vermont) right now, with a significantly higher salary (as a principal engineer), a lower income tax, healthier housing market, lower cost of living, and better quality of life.

Western Europe has all those things, is actually welcoming, has sane healthcare, and you don't even need to own a gun!


Moving from high taxes low pay shortage of housing in popular cities Canada to high taxes low pay shortage of housing in popular citied western Europe I don't think will make much of a difference. Being able to have a gun is an additional freedom.


It doesn't have the salary, eng salaries are significant deflated in Europe when compared to North America


Outside of tech it's not too different. Tech pay isn't even bad, it just doesn't exhibit the massively inflated salaries of the US. Software is an easier, less professional job than most professional fields, it doesn't make sense for it to command preposterous sums. Though American devs don't like having this fact pointed out to them.


> Software is an easier, less professional job

Are you in software development?


Yes, why? Coming from a family of actual engineers, I call myself a developer. Software workers haven't earned the title engineer.


TBH I call myself and most software devs an engineer. It gives us something to aspire to.


Canada used to say our healthcare was better but that hasnt been true for atleast a decade. Its more choose your version of crappy. Do you want to oay with your life savings (usa) or your life (canada)


I (born and raised Canadian) moved my family to Canada 5 years ago.

We've been on a waiting list for a doctor ever since. My only option to see a doctor here is to go the emergency room at the closest hospital.


If it makes you feel any better, I've been in the healthcare IT field for 20 years. I tried to stay away from the doctors office as much as possible.

Last year I started feeling exhausted 24/7 and tried to make an appointment, but got turned away from my doctors office because my doctor retired and the new guy didn't want to let me make an appointment.

So here I am on a waiting list, in a city where 10% of the population don't have a doctor either. I've been waiting for over a year.

I wish I could change fields, "once you've seen how the sausage is made, you'll want to be a vegetarian"...


Yah you are paying with your life. Its shockingly stupid because there are lots of good examples to oick and choose from how to do a public payor system correctly (singapore does it best imo but nordics and france are options for examples of better tham here just not best)


Yes. Waited 18 months for a 15 minute cateract surgery that I needed 18 months ago. Should have had my license taken away this past year they were so bad.


Shaw didn't have enough capital to continue operating, and foreign ownership restrictions prevented them from raising more. The government decided that Rogers buying Shaw was a better outcome than Shaw going out of business, which is a position I'm inclined to agree with.

I was a Shaw Mobile (not Freedom) customer, and Rogers wanted me to drive 600km (both ways) through the Kootenay mountains in winter to get my new SIM cards.

Weird. They mailed my new SIM cards to me.


> Shaw didn't have enough capital to continue operating

?

They had $10b+ in equity to work with and had ample opportunity to capture ZIRP if they wanted.

Anything inhibiting Shaw’s ability to raise capital was its dual class structure where the Shaw family retained control despite owning a minority of the shares.


$10B isn't enough to set up a 5G network. And... I guess it's a good thing they didn't assume ZIRP would be around forever?


Dunno if it was post-Quebecor acquisition, but Freedom Mobile did just that. Not every populated area, just their existing footprint.


Post acquisition. Part of the agreement was that Quebecor was going to put a lot of money into building new infrastructure.


> Shaw didn't have enough capital to continue operating, and foreign ownership restrictions prevented them from raising more. The government decided that Rogers buying Shaw was a better outcome than Shaw going out of business

They could also have just eliminated our archaic foreign ownership laws. I am surprised this hasn’t come up in trade negotiations. If we want improved productivity then we desperately need competition. If we don’t get serious about this then we’ll continue to languish economically as a nation.


Right, that would have been my preferred solution. But for unfortunately that's not something the current government is inclined to consider.


> Weird. They mailed my new SIM cards to me.

Rogers support is pretty notorious country wide, I'm sure it still varies at a localized level.

I had a Rogers internet install technician come to my house (for Teksavvy because the gov mandates they run the networks for small operators) and instead of drilling a hole through a wall he opened a window a crack ran the cable through and went home. The girl on the phone couldn't believe my story but I'm sure nothing happened in terms of punishment.

This is the outcome of artificial barriers to competition in the name of national benefit. It doesn't matter how absurd your customer story, neither customers nor the upstart businesses have a choice.


They did mail me SIM cards, three times, for three different numbers each time.

Their system didn't work when setting them up, and I had two different support operators tell me that my only option was to drive to Cranbrook. In the middle of winter. This is a drive that involves 3 mountain passes.


Ok, that's unfortunate, but clearly a technical problem rather than a policy problem. What would you have them do, keep mailing new SIM cards when they have no idea why they're not working?


In Southeast Asia there are many markets selling used clothing like this. It provides a good business for the vendor and a great option for many locals to get much nicer clothes than they could otherwise obtain. Googling, it appears similar in Africa.

I'm not sure it's quite as evil as the author implies, though, I don't doubt dealing with the junk is a problem and there should be some recycling infrastructure setup to deal with the junk clothing.


Want to help a poor country? Buy their products at fair rates. They will handle their gardments very well.

Buying clothes made by borderline-slaves and dumping them used on another country is evil. It is kind of green washing pooverty


You don't have the slightest clue what you are talking about.

Sorry.

Regards,

Someone who knows many people in the garment industry.


I also know quite a few people who work in that industry in developing countries and I don’t think you know what your talking about.


Damn, you mean we can't just swap resistors to under/over volt anymore?

I am getting old.

(tongue in cheek, and yes, I am getting old)

Shit, I remember just using a pencil to lower resistance values.


I remember some boards, you would have to paint a cpu pin with nail polish to stop it from conducting, or carefully jump one of the several hundred pins on the socket…


You can. The main thing is that software-based attacks are easier to perform.


That'd be reason to take away the reenable from UEFI but write protecting the EFI variable where changing it already requires to boot into an EFI editor is just being dicks, pardon my French. Just let me enable it , I am aware of the risks.


I think the trouble is that it is not possible to distinguish (through reliable technical means) a responsible overclocker such as yourself versus an unscrupulous actor editing EFI variables in flash. So, because some bad guys/gals found a way to damage the system, all the good guys/gals suffer as a result, because the system cannot tell them apart. Reminds me of airport security...


Or just footybite.cc will become footybite1.cc, then footybite2.cc... so on. The people writing these laws are seemingly clueless about the internet. Or perhaps, the lawyers just don't care as they are getting paid.


How will users find the new domains? If they can reliability do so then dns is not needed in the first place. If not, then the laws are effective.


There are almost certainly aggregate sites that will share the new domains, messages boards, social media, instant messaging, etc. Word of the new domains will travel very quickly.

Hell, they could setup their own public DNS outside of France and suggest users use that. Users already switched from local/ISP DNS to Cloudflare / Google because of the previous law so that is not a big hurdle (ignoring the obvious security problem - many users won't care they just want to watch the game).

My point though is that these laws will be very easy to bypass just like most anti piracy laws before it. Note that The Pirate Bay is still up and running.


> Users already switched from local/ISP DNS to Cloudflare / Google because of the previous law so that is not a big hurdle (ignoring the obvious security problem - many users won't care they just want to watch the game).

In many cases it was browsers changing the used resolver behind the users back contrary to OS-wide settings.


Twitter and Wikipedia as a source to locate the actual dns address worked for the pirate bay back in the day, I assume if nothing else piracy sites would not be afraid to just use raw ip addresses.


Google and friends (literally, your friends will tell you).


"Hey leloctai, what's the new URL for <torrent_site>?"


Could be malicious compliance at any level. Maybe the judge likes to stream football too?

Most people don't want effective censorship and effective censorship is much more technically difficult as well as dangerous.

I'm happy for them to claim ignorance and implement easily circumventable blocks, rather than go full North Korea.


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