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jbm

3,327 karma · joined October 16, 2008

Architect/Developer/BSc in Calgary, Alberta.

Worked at Coca-Cola and Heroku, among others

http://www.twitter.com/_jm

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jbm··on Microsoft and others tell crypto platform not to tokenize their stocks
Not a crypto person, but is it a situation where one may have crypto and wants to invest it without converting it to USD/CAD/JPY/etc.. and paying taxes on it?
jbm··on Xbox wants you to pay 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games you bought
The announced a few things.

1. Concentrating on Cable (LOL in retrospect, but controlling the living room was always the plan so I get it) 2. Getting rid of physical games

jbm··on MPs moving to restrict gambling ads in Canada
I'm not the best person to ask, but the last I heard, New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province. The rest are either French or English only. (It was a news story when the premier of Manitoba spoke in French in his legislature a few weeks back).

That said, I live in Alberta now and normal serious parents tend to send their kids to French immersion. It's a leg up if you are going to get a government job, and it is pretty cool. That's not to say that John Q. Public is going to be happy if you are going to talk to him in French, but I think with the explosion of other languages in Alberta, the regressive types now are probably more accepting of it than they were before.

(Again this is just my observation, N=1, etc..)

jbm··on MPs moving to restrict gambling ads in Canada
LOL, this is literally my favourite piece of Canadian culture.

Sadly, no pond hockey games with my friends, because I had no friends, because I didn't support the Oilers. ;)

jbm··on MPs moving to restrict gambling ads in Canada
I am from Montreal and (I can't believe this but it is 100% true) I was bullied in my (English-speaking) Montreal-area grade school for wearing non-Oilers merch. I was pleased when he left. (Yes, this is the home of Rocket Richard, the Pocket Rocket, Jean Beliveau, Guy Lafleur and Patrick Roy at the time)

I think the online element hates Gretzky because of something about the order of Canada but that does nothing to me and I honestly don't care. However, the gambling ads literally damage the fabric of the country and ruin the lives of average people, for a guy who made more in an year than many people made in a lifetime.

jbm··on MPs moving to restrict gambling ads in Canada
Ditto, this is a cancer. Wayne Gretzky is dead to me because of his support of these ads. The greatest Canadian athlete of the 80s and 90s is now Bret "The Hitman" Hart.

On a more depressing note, wasn't this always a thing? I remember being in 4th grade when a classmate brought in something called "Mise-o-jou", which was being run by the Quebec government.

jbm··on Tesla 'Cannot Guarantee' Roadster Reservation Holders Will Ever Get a Car
During the pandemic, Canadians were told that to order a new Toyota Sienna or a Rav4 Prime may require between 3 and 5 years. This is from Toyota and both cars were in full production. If you preordered they would not even guarantee the price, and reserved the right to increase it.

It was so ridiculous that people would buy the car in the US and bring it here. Other people gave up and started importing 30 year old Japanese minivans — I see JDM minivans relatively commonly now.

As such an X year wait for a car isn't new even outside the dysfunctional communist block.

However I'm pretty sure Toyota will deliver eventually, can't say the same for the Roadster.

jbm··on Furifont, a Japanese font that shows furigana
This is an interesting use of ligatures for sure. However, I really don't know when one would use it. Couldn't you just use Ruby tags for a website?
jbm··on Tesla Roadster
I should note that I didn't mean to imply it was inherent that EVs were less reliable, but rather, that engineering mattered and Tesla's engineering always had underdeveloped parts.
jbm··on Tesla Roadster
Would you like to see the bills I got from Tesla? I've shared them before and I'm happy to do it again.

(Also my Tesla is 74.5k miles, so nowhere near 100k)

-edit-

I was a victim of misinformation from my local EV repair shop.

https://www.dormanproducts.com/pages/products/oe-fix/article...

The prices you are talking about are incorrect but there are 3rd party parts now.

jbm··on Tesla Roadster
Everyone is talking about the Cybertruck, but both the 3 and the Y have plenty of engineering problems as well. I believe both cars are listed as below-average reliability by CR.

Worse, there are no 3rd parties producing cheaper suspension parts, so your old Model 3 is going to have to spend 2000-3000$ on an yearly basis until you get sick of fixing the suspension. Tesla claims to have fixed the issue on newer models (and apparently they did a lot of work on the suspension), but they don't really take responsibility for their old cars so I doubt they will take responsibility when their design causes problems for you.

I do enjoy driving my 2019 SR+ Model 3, but I hate when people do the whole "Well on first principles, EVs have less parts so they are more reliable..." thing. My Toyota Sienna has been far more reliable than the Model 3, despite having many, many more parts.

jbm··on The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)
For what it's worth, I play 18xx with my girls and they are around that age. It's just a matter of not stretching things out and going one turn per day, which seems to work naturally with Diplomacy
jbm··on The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014)
Why not play with your kids?

As weird as it is, I play Shikoku 1889 with my kids, betrayal and anger and everything. If anything, Diplomacy might be easier to setup and keep up.

jbm··on Triple H Writes Anniversary Story for Spider-Man #1000
I am legitimately shocked that it was this Triple H. I was sure before reading it that it would be another Hunter Hearst Helmsley.
jbm··on Hacking IKEA Furniture
Nitpick but solid wood furniture does not weigh more than the particleboard furniture from Ikea.

Also, my 2 cents, but it is high time for a return to utilitarianism in furniture. Just getting a basic leather sofa without cup holders and other e-garbage is a huge pain. (Ironically, Ikea is ok for this.)

jbm··on U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications
Prior to Covid, my wife had to exit the country to get photos taken as part of the permanent resident process. We took a trip to Montana for that purpose.

This seems to have changed in the past 3-4 years, but as the GP said, the original process did involve leaving.

jbm··on Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down
This is such a Reddit opinion.

If you are in Alberta or Saskatchewan, the government is decided before your election is done. There is no Senate, like in the US, to balance your needs vs others.

Despite this unbalance, there is a clear majority of Albertans who are anti-independence. (I agree that the government, run by a radio entertainer is shameful and disgusting.)

jbm··on Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down
I don't understand this and would like a clarification.

There are zero Canadian automobile assemblers; they are Canadian subsidiaries of American companies, with some parts manufacturers being here.

Assuming American companies (and companies from subordinates like Japan) leave, what would be the problem in having a similar relationship with China? Is it because their manufacturing is more integrated?

jbm··on U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’
A previous grade school my kids attended (a public school in Calgary) started at 8. They left the house at 7:40ish to go, which was pretty awful.

Eventually we wound up home schooling / remote schooling during Covid and moved to a spot where the school started much later.

Frankly though, not late enough. I let them sleep until 10 during COVID and I feel it was positive for everyone involved.

jbm··on As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
While I dislike Instagram reels and stories, I do feel like there is almost certainly scientific studies on radicalization that would benefit from actual histories of dumb memes. I feel like that about a lot of things, really.

There probably are some important hidden discord groups that would explain the origin of many political positions. Unlike smokey meetings in scummy bars, that exists now and is on a database somewhere.

jbm··on Parametron: 50s Japanese computer that uses neither transistors nor vacuum tubes
Maybe the text should include some extraneous war crime solicitation to ensure a human wrote it. Maybe we should all do so. Death to (insert random enemy here)
jbm··on Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
I went to a decent high school, this was not something covered in 7th grade. It isn't covered in my daughter's school either.

For the 2026 version of me out there, please ignore. It is nerd posturing, and as real as the boomers at your gym claiming to have benched 225/315/405 in high school, despite having terrible form while doing 185.

jbm··on AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying
Lobbying, as it is practised in the US, is hardly better than bribery. Talking to lawmakers about what is exclusively in your best interest, to the exclusion of everything else, is harmful. You wind up leveraging a group collective's understanding of dishonesty and dark speech patterns. No citizen has the eloquence or bull pulpit to oppose this.

That said, this is how the US works now. It might have started with military-industrial companies, but it is basically wide spread. Unfortunately, once the taboo is broken, it is broken permanently.

jbm··on China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
> Open-source software isn't a moral good

Yes it is.

jbm··on China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
I was a little radicalized when ChatGPT literally refused to translate parts of 1000+ year old religious texts and told me it was due to copyright concerns.
jbm··on FAA lets Boeing sign off on 737 MAX, 787 airworthiness certificates again
I live in Calgary. Both major airlines cost the same. There is no difference in sorting. Both airlines use the 737.

I lived in Tokyo. I used to spend more to avoid getting accosted at the US border. A lot more.

You can't call it choice when your vendors all offer the same product for the same price.

jbm··on New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium
If human activity is taxed, AI activity will be taxed. It's just inevitable. It will be taxed at multiple levels until we figure out the right level to do so. Some of it will be detrimental to AI development but that's normal - in Canada we had a hidden manufacturing sales tax until the 80s which made exports more expensive.

A technology that puts X% of people out of work is going to be taxed.

jbm··on Fired by Google for creating the Google workspace CLI
Your ships would have been sunk during the 2002 Millennial challenge and an entire bureaucracy would defend you for the next 20 years.
jbm··on Mexican government unveils a prototype for a new homegrown, ultra-affordable EV
Even Cargo Bicycles cost more than $10k. I think a 6 seater people mover is worth far more than those.

I'd buy a 6 seater with this range but not with the speed limitations (I think it is like 50-60 kph which is a non starter)

jbm··on Anthropic apologizes for invisible Claude Fable guardrails
No one is "grateful" for being labelled a security risk. The statement reads more like a Chinese "Ah Q" story than a real response.

(Unless they are piping the F1 Mercedes theme song in the announce system at anthropic, in which case maybe you are right)

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