armagon

Maybe power is available, internet is not, and you are running a factory -- perhaps a cannery or perhaps making textiles. Maybe the factory existed before the disaster, and there's enough demand to run it if you can, but you no longer have (or never had) pre-computerized technology to run it -- so you need to make your existing computers work to run things.

> any and all peaceful protesters whose rights are infringed will be receiving compensation as per the emergency act.

Interesting. This is the first I've heard of that.

Discussion starts in Part V / Section 46 at https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/FullText.html

The truckers started protesting due to federal mandates preventing them from crossing the borders, so protesting in Ottawa makes lots of sense.

They are asking the prime minister to drop the mandates or step down.

I agree that it isn't reasonable to expect the federal government to tell the provinces what to do, but they have been protests in all the major cities as well (so far as I can tell).

To control information, and influence public opinion.

For example, with the trucker protest right now, all the mainstream media outlets have been very critical of the protests, describing them as violent, racist, homophobic, and so on. Conversely, almost everything I've read from people who've been there in person has been that the protests are peaceful, with a party atmosphere.

Rex Murphy (well known political commentator) talked about it here: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-in-ottawa-the-sk...

Having bailed out the media, the media are very friendly to the government's portrayal of things. (Heres an article from the left and right on the consequences of media bailouts: https://www.canadaland.com/canadian-media-liberals-trudeau-g... and https://westernstandardonline.com/2020/10/how-trudeau-bought... )

I don't believe the opinions on the trucker convoy would be nearly the same if the media was reporting what was going on. It makes me look at past protests -- such as Occupy Wall Street -- differently.

With the mainstream media in line (or, in stronger terms, with the decimation of the fourth estate), there are still people using wrongthink -- people speaking on social media. Clearly, that has to be dealt with. Wrongthink must not be allowed!

We've already seen how the major social media platforms are disallowing freedom of thought and speech in the name of protecting people from misinformation. This is the same problem Joe Rogan is facing -- he interviewed some doctors who said early treatment of Covid makes a big difference, and, rather bearing down with real science which asks questions and looks at the data in different ways, people want to shut him up, denying him the right to his free speech.

I believe that the scientific process was one of the first casualties of the pandemic, and things are looking grim for free speech in Canada.

Canada is working on passing laws to shut down conversation online. https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2022/02/lobby-harder-canadian-he...

The government won't even tell us what the heard when the asked Canadians about this the last time it was in the works.

I for one don't trust the government (or YouTube) with power to deem that certain facts are not true, as there is every reason to believe what is deemed true might change with the winds of public opinion.

I tried once. I'd taken a couple of business courses and was trying to be a micropreneur building apps. It became clear that I didn't know how to reach people, and that going back to a day job was going to be a much better support my family.

That's intriguing.

On the other hand, I'm amazed that 5% of the population voted for the People's Party of Canada -- a party which had no hope of winning. This absolutely split the vote on the right enough to make the CPC lose seats.

> 5:05 p.m.

> Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he has invoked the Emergencies Act as a “last resort” to bolster the police response to convoy demonstrators and to “bring the situation fully under control.”

I really feel like there were a number of "resorts" that could've been taken before this "last" one.

Engaging in dialogue with the truckers and not inflaming the situation by calling the truckers names are at the top of my list.

Engaging in dialogue with Canadians would be next on my list.

Using the powers granted to Ontario in their state of emergency would be on my list well before declaring a nation-wide emergency.

So many rules have been dubious and nonsensical. I don't recall the specifics, but it seems like at one time in Alberta you could get together with 20 people, but you could only have ten people get together for a funeral.

The point of allowing a person to do X is based on the safety of them doing X. If we are preventing X due to fear of covid, then it makes sense to prevent people from doing X if they have covid, regardless of their vaccination status, and allowing them to do it if they do not have covid, regardless of their vaccination status.

Some of the rules appear to be punitive towards people who have chosen not to be vaccinated, and not designed to curb the spread of the disease; that is why hypocrisy is being called out.

The conservative party forced a vote today to drop the mandates by the end of the month. It failed 151 to 185, with MPs voting along party lines (Conservatives and Bloc Québécois in favour; Liberals, NDP, and Green opposed) with a couple of abstentions.

https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/live-vote?voteId=234

Presumably she goes to school in-person but everyone is wearing a mask.

It seems pretty clear to me that the protests have everything to do with the vaccine mandates.

Why should only people who are fired be allowed to protest? Most of the truckers are vaccinated, but they are protesting for the right of those who aren't to be allowed to do their job.

https://angusreid.org/omicron-incidence-restrictions/ - scroll down to "Part Four: What now? Majority want restrictions to end"; 54% of Canadians want the mandates to end.

OTOH, this poll https://abacusdata.ca/ottawa-survey-freedom-convoy/ suggests that about 22% of Canadians support the convoy and 67% don't.

> > Canada has some of the harshest (and most ridiculous) covid measures in the world

> And we have some of the lowest death rates in the world. Should we just condemn the vulnerable people to death because freedom is more important?

Should we continue to allow children to die from suicide in favour of the mandates? (ex. https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/milas-story )

I think you'll find that most people understand there is a balance to be maintained; nobody wants to see kids die, either because of the virus, or because of the response to it.

> Can you give examples of these "ridiculous" covid measures?

You mentioned the chief one yourself -- people are threatened with losing their livelihood if they don't comply; the ability to work are travel are guaranteed in the charter of rights and freedoms (and the only surviving signatory of that document is suing the government). Many people have been coerced into receiving the vaccines who did not want them.

The measures are not proportionate with the severity of the disease. Everyone was willing to do two weeks to break the curve, but no one signed up for two years of it.

There's no question that China has been insane with their response to Covid.

> > bimbo prime minister that has no interest in civil discourse about what measures the federal government should be able to impose on people and is only interested in securing his own power

> Why should he negotiate with people whose demands include the removal of a democratically elected government (from a few months ago I might add)? You can't shut down cities and blockade roads just because the party representing your interests lost but I guess we haven't learned from Jan 6.

Mr. Trudeau is the prime minister of the entire country, not just the people who voted Liberal. It is his duty to consider what the people have to say. A competent politician would've address people's concerns before they resorted to civil disobedience. Mr. Trudeau says everything is on the table to solve this problem -- everything, that is, except listening to the electorate.

The truckers are not interested in politics. They're not all represented by one party. Indeed, they have the most support from the farthest right and farthest left parties (ie. PPC and Green parties), neither of which have any power.

How many people need to support a position for it to be worth hearing? Do we not make efforts to protect people with extreme minority positions?

> If the federal mandate (i.e. getting tested after the crossing border) is unconstitutional, the supreme court is down the road. But let's suppose this mandate is dropped, how can these unvaccinated truckers enter Canada when they need to be vaccinated to enter the US first?

There are a number of lawsuits in progress from months ago (ex. https://www.mounties4freedom.com). It is surprising how long they take to be heard. It is true that some of the mandates come from the provinces, and some from the USA. The prime minister can address the mandates he has control over and that would help significantly towards defusing the situation.

Having been following the movement from supporters Facebook groups, you are seeing it much as they are seeing it. The government sees it differently, but it seems hard to me to call this a "fringe minority ... who are holding unacceptable views". What fraction of Canadians they represent is hard to tell (although, honestly, it wouldn't be hard for the media to commission and report an unbiased poll).

I've heard reports of tens of thousands of trucks. It's a shame the highway cameras were turned off.

I see claimed that the Ontario Provincial Police say there are 100k to 130k trucks, but I can't see anything official to back that up -- nothing on their twitter feed or website. Maybe on the radio -- but not something I can easily check.

Here's someone on the ground who thinks there are 250k to 1 million people protesting in Ottawa right now. https://twitter.com/JuliusRuechel/status/1487570992356634625...

There's a message going around that one strategy to turn the public against the convoy is as follows, as leaked by a whistleblower:

   - a police riot control horse (named after Terry Fox, no less), being led across a street, will be hit with a truck
   - the driver who hit the horse will flee (hit-n-run)
   - the horse will be euthanized when the news cameras come

but the direct participants will be plants.

----

There's also a message saying the prime minister paid a lot (I thought the number cited was "47 million dollars") to hire people to, well, be disturbers at the event.

----

I can't tell if either of these are true. I'd like to say it is beyond the pale, but it just isn't obvious to me that it is.

----

On the other hand, there's a video where the prime minister says,

"Now, you sometimes hear about Liberal bias in the media these days, how they're constantly letting off our government, letting our government off the hook for no good reason. Frankly I think that's insulting. It's clear they let us off the hook for a very good reason, because we paid them $600 million."

but, in looking it up, I see it was a joke taken out of context (see https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/trudeau-media-bribery-fake-v... ). It is so hard to tell what is what these days.

----

With all that said, I am not at all impressed with the Canadian media right now. It is downright shameful the way they've been spinning this story.

Word is that the traffic cameras have recently been turned off.

Not just numbers, but numbers we can trust.

I've been really impressed with how much data my province (Alberta) has made available, but now, I'm wondering.

They recently had "technical difficulties", and the numbers changed from showing that double-vaxxed people were the most at-risk for omicron, to showing that unvaxxed people are. https://twitter.com/AB_CovidFacts/status/1486112498977685506

Also disturbing is that, if you get vaccinated and have issues within the first 14 days, they count you as being unvaccinated in all the reports: https://metatron.substack.com/p/alberta-just-inadvertently-c...

I think the defence is the market speaking. I'm not going to regularly use a browser that I can't do ad-blocking in (or, indeed, other extensions), and I'm not going to recommend it to other people. The browsers technically-minded people install for their family and friends do really make a difference.

Hi Marcus.

It would be nice to have some idea going in for what the requirements are. - I have to admit, I don't understand why I can't preview the 3D experiences right on my computer. - Likewise, when I try the QR code on my iPhone 6 ... well, I'm hardly surprised to not see anything in 3D, but it wouldn't hurt to have a little more detail than "Scan this QR code on your iPhone or iPad."

I suppose I could mention that I've done some game development and a little bit of VR/AR, but have never heard of the USDZ file format before.

Give it a go -- the nice thing about fixing something broken is that if your fix doesn't work, you are no worse off than you were before, and if it does work, tada! the thing is fixed.

I learned to sew.

I suppose the biggest thing that got me interested was I got a book on making costumes from a Humble Bundle. Keeping me interested, though, was a desire to do something that was not on a screen during the pandemic.

I probably read through 15 books from the library in my spare time, honestly, over the course of several months. I asked me wife some questions, and read through the manual for her sewing machine -- and then watched enough YouTube videos and did things tediously slowly until I understood what I was supposed to do. I found books aimed at kids especially good for beginners, and re-read things as I understood better.

I borrowed some patterns from my aunt, and made pyjamas for my four year old. (I figured something small would waste less fabric). It took me five weeks, on and off, to get them made, and involved a lot of learning, but they turned out really nicely and my kid wore them every night for quite a while. Since then I made some Hallowe'en costumes. (Making pyjamas for everyone for Christmas would've been nice, but I haven't been able to make the time.)

Why this instead of something else?

    - I didn't know how to do it
    - I could do it at home
    - We had the basic tools

The article says "The recent Commission study on the impact of Open Source Software and Hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy showed that investment in open source leads on average to four times higher returns. "

Four times higher returns ... compared to what?

It's like an advertisement that says our product contains 30% less fat. 30% less than what? Than other leading brands? Than your previous formulation (and if so, how do we know you didn't artificially increase the amount of fat in said formulation, so it'd be easy to reduce)?

> The problem with [the plan of changing the formulas of drugs so they can be re-patented, from the patent-holder's perspective] is that a reformulation doesn’t stop the old drug’s patent from expiring, opening the market for cheap generics. To head this threat off, McKinsey developed a disinformation campaign to discourage doctors from prescribing generics and to convince patients to refuse such prescriptions. The McKinsey campaign included outright lies — false statements claiming that the old formulations were unsafe. Alongside those lies, McKinsey developed messaging to convince patients and docs that the old drugs were “a step backwards.”"

Great explanation of Merck disclaiming Ivermectin (see https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use... ) despite the drug being safer than Tylenol when used by humans ( https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/the-great... )

Edit: They specifically called out "A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies" and spread FUD saying "Ivermectin should not be used during pregnancy since safety in pregnancy has not been established."

Well, I'm frugal by nature, have six kids, and hope to retire some day. I'll spent $500 Cdn on a car repair (when necessary) but think twice for $15 eating out by myself. $40 for an application I want is a hard one for me -- it has to provide a clear value that I can't reasonably substitute for.

Interesting. Thank you.

Ooh. I like that thought. Thank you.

I meant that a regular user might buy from the Play Store, either of Apple's App stores, or from the Microsoft store.

Admittedly, I seldom buy software from those stores myself -- or, indeed, at all. The things I'm interested in are often available as open source, or they are like $30 or $40 USD (or sometimes $200) and it is hard for me to justify the price (although, if I were single, I could do it on a whim).

Mysterydip, how do the sales compare of a game with IAP vs one with an upfront cost? (I ask as it is conceivably that fewer than 1% of people who get the IAP version pay, in which case you've made as much either way).