lytfyre

For those unfamiliar with the term, a "Crown Corp" is a private company, but wholly owned by the government. It's not an unusual structure here, the BoC is itself a Crown Corp.

To contrast, Interac, the system used for canadian debit and person to person transfers, is a private company, with ownership by the banks.

Just a heads up, the trial period the email you send out for new signups seems to be broken - which is making trying this out hard.

your email:

>I just unlocked a personal discount of 40% on your account, and switched Pro on for the next 3 hours so you can use it before you decide. It unlocks you all premium features as well as: ∞ No credit ceiling

But after using doing one round of three images with the beta, it won't let me generate another example. Trying to put a handful of tests through to compare to what we get from our current system on top of nano bannana pro.

that STMicroelectronics is 8.31cm by 9.92cm. That's _massive_ by digital sensor terms, but still pretty far off the 42cm by 29cm OP's effectively using.

Thanks!

The IR Chrome does not need a channel swap, just setting the white balance in-camera is enough to get a usable image.

The deep yellow looks mostly like a purple and yellow mess straight out of camera. Intent is for the yellow filter to block blue light, and a UV cut filter, leaving the blue channel to have ~almost solely IR, then subtracting that from the other channels to leave you with "clean" Red, Green, and IR as your three channels you can swap around. Probably the least dry camera signal approach of the bunch, unfortunately.

there are lenses out there designed for apochromatic performance across the UV-Vis-IR band, but they tend to be really pricey.

The Coastal Optical 60mm is a frequently cited one. UV in particular is challenging, because glass that works well in the visible light range can be quite poorly translucent in UV. Quartz is better, but drives up the cost a lot, and comes with other tradeoffs.

>Whenever shooting a subject with a mixture of visible and infrared light, it becomes readily apparent that infrared light focuses differently from visible light. For many subjects, this can mean having to choose between crisp visible contours and an odd pink glow, or blurred edges with some unusual pink features inside. Some things never look sharp no matter where you move the focus.

The extent of this effect is very lens dependent. It also occurs in different colours of visible light too, depending on how well the lens design accounts for it. Optically, the term is "Chromatic Aberration" - lens designers try and account for it in the visible spectrum with optical design and lens coatings, and modern designs are generally extremely well corrected in the visible spectrum. _Usually_ designers aren't worried about the design correctly handing convergence into IR and UV, so how well designs focus them to the same point as the visible spectrum is hit or miss. There's specialist lenses out there that are designed specifically for wide spectrum apochromatism, but they tend to be special purpose and very expensive - especially if they handle UV.

The author mentions it at the bottom of the post as something they're interested in trying out, but I've found it very fun to play with dual bandpass filters - they pass a part of the Visible Spectrum + IR, which creates some interesting options in editing for visual display. There's an example in this set I shot with different filters - https://www.reddit.com/r/infraredphotography/comments/1dnki0...

The report linked in the article has BC support _massively_ in favour of "more light in the evenings" instead of "wake up when there is light", citing health and wellness concerns. "Better" seems a matter of opinion.

Little bit more specialized, but Lee Valley Tools [https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca] stores seem to still operate this way. Showroom (and a few computer kiosks) and order forms up front, then line up for them to pull the items from the back.

The Canadian Mint in Ottawa has a rather impressive large gold bar on display in the gift shop for people to lift and take photos with. It's not in a case or anything. It's chained down with a Protec padlock - and there's a cop a few feet away to deal with you trying something un-subtle.

I think it's a pretty good endorsement for Abloy.

Never tried the Expert Mouse in particular. Two of mine were slimblades, one orbit with scroll wheel. Different failures each time -

Orbit - broken plastic around one of the bearings. ball no longer turned smoothly or straight in every direction, and dragged. Slimblade #1 - began to operate erratically. I believe it was a failure of some kind with one of the optical sensors, but I never was able to figure it out consistently. Slimblade #2 - microswitch under the LMB failed mechanically, no longer triggered.

the slimblade's were provided by my employer at the time, the orbit was purchased personally for at home - it's use overlapped with the slimblades at work.

I don't think I'm super unusually hard on my trackballs - My Elecom Huge lasted for ~6 years before the soft touch plastic finally got a bit gross from skin oil contact, but still was functionally fine, and my current protoarc is going strong two years in.

They do, but I've had severe quality/lifetime issues with them. Three Kensington trackballs, two different models, all three lasted under a year for me.

Vancouver has a plant that harvests heat from sewage to provide district heating and hot water (https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/how-the-utili...) - you don't need super high temperatures for it to be useful. During construction there was talk that the Telus building downtown's in house data centre providing heat to the attached condo building (https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/servers/telus-warms-cond...) - I'm unsure if that actually went ahead.

Fundamentally, a limit on doing it at scale is that it for efficiency it requires the heat to be consumed near the production - and the bulk of large power intense data centres are not located in the midst of high density residential neighbourhoods with a demand for heat.

I grabbed an alphagrip from the ewaste bin at my local hackspace a few years ago. Gave it a solid week - which was enough for me to get at least marginally competent with the layout. I found it extremely awkward. I think the compact controller style forces your wrists into an awkward angle, so any advantages of minimizing fingers motion is compromised by the awkward neutral position. Sloppy back switch mechanisms and a really bad trackball on top.

Too uncomfortable to use full time, to awkward to hunt and peck for an occasional couch/TV navigation keyboard - It went back in the ewaste bin.

I've been on a kinesis advantage 360 for a few years, after an ergodox and the older fixed size Advantages. Been eyeing the Svalboard, thanks for sharing your experiences!

I've usually seen "thumb clusters" used for those style of key layouts, rather than thumb pads.

I've been using some variant of the Kinesis Advantage line for over 10 years - currently the Advantage360, their split board. I used an ergodox for a few years before that.

The Advantages are all 3d curved layouts with thumb clusters like the Maltron, and I haven't had RSI issues since making the move. The 360pro runs ZMK for firmware customization, and the stands do support different tenting angles.

Worth a try if you're looking for a more direct alternative to the Maltron.

On an old team that did this, we joked that the cleaning staff had as much control of the roadmap as the product managers. The cheap offbrand sticky notes didn't stick very well, so after one or two status changes, or just being on the wall for a while, they tended to fall to the floor. If we were lucky they'd get stuck somewhere at random, and not just thrown out.

>There isn't some industry saying "yes we could cut and cover here, but we prefer the slower more expensive option of a TBM"!

At least for Vancouver, there was absolutely an industry arguing for the slower-more-expensive TBM option on a route that followed exactly a road (the Broadway line extension) - local businesses along the route. The previous line which was mostly done by Cut-and-Cover (the Canada Line) had a very major impact on businesses along the route for years.

There are plenty of people who will acknowledge that something is cheaper _overall_ but the impact on a small group being higher can make them extremely vocal, and that has to be managed in public projects.

> I see that [...] Canada line under Vancouver chose tunnels over cut and cover because it was cheaper.

Canada Line was mostly Cut-and-Cover - only the bits below downtown and crossing below the water were bored, the bulk of the underground was done cut and cover for cost and speed to make sure it opened for the 2010 olympics.

It was not a popular choice - not really announced before the project was approved, and local businesses along the route took a big hit.

Vancouver's current Broadway Line Extension is being done with TBMs to avoid the impact that the cut and cover canada line segment construction had.

unfortunately discontinued.

The 6000$USD price tag unfortunately made it hard to justify at the time.

I believe Rogers are running DOCSIS-over-Sewage, the competing cable standard.

Went about an hour north of Vancouver BC Canada to get away from bit city lights and watch.

It was probably not the brightest small strands I've ever seen - if my memories of Northern Saskatchewan as a kid are still accurate - but I don't think I've seen the whole sky light up to such an extent.

here's a photo: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fu...

magenta and green colours were clearly visible in person during the intense periods, although obviously not as bright or intense as long exposure photos. Solidly visible bands for at least the two hours I stayed out.

Wouldn't knock it till you try it! The drink kinda had it's moment a couple years ago - "Aerocanos" or "Steamed Iced Americanos" are the names I've heard for the drink. Often made with the kind of post-brew chilled cold brew that OP was railing about. Cold coffee, steamed to frothy, then either pour over ice to re-chill or serve warm.

Wouldn't try to randomly talk a barista into making one, but if you see them on the menu at a shop or have an espresso machine, they're pretty neat.

Video on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD_4hOg_SWU

Coffee nerd, I like to play with this stuff. Steaming cold brew (flash or regular) will give a very smooth frothy texture - almost nitro like foam. You can serve them over ice to get them back to cold, or serve warm.

Tasty if you use good coffee, and pretty unique honestly - "steamed iced americano" or "aerocano" are the two names I've heard if you want other people's reports on them.

You're right that it's very different from the experience of microwaved cold brew, and a customers response can be all over the place depending on what they're expecting.

If any HNers are looking for a cheap entry point into the style without spending $250+ on a beautiful bunch of laboratory glass ware, there's the puckpuck[1], which sits on top of an aeropress and turns it into functionally the same device as the Yama towers - slow controlled valve dripping cold water at a controlled rate onto a bed of coffee and a paper filter over the course of hours.

I've found it a nice way to play with the style without investing the money and space. Still want one of those towers if I ever see them cheap though.

[1] https://puckpuck.me/ - no connection, just a customer.

Look, my coffee routine is _perfectly reasonable_.

Fractional gram dosing, multiple pours at different temperatures, timed switch from immersion to percolation, and benchmarking different filter papers has a _measurable impact_ on my coffee.

And I have the data and refractometry measurement data to show it.

... Admittedly the refractometer was expensive, and incorporating it into the routine is complex and not very intuitive.

I can also assure you that I don't look cool while doing it.

BC Hydro (British Columbia electric power utility, government owned) was 98% renewable sources in 2022, ~91% of that hydro[1] - for the entire province.

that last 2% is going to take a lot of work to replace, but I'd be surprised to see it backslide.

[1] https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/customer-portal/...

I think another notable difference is that Vancouver Specials are nominally single family detached homes, but the design does lend itself to turning the main floor into a decently sized, above ground rental suite. All without requiring the kind of major renovations that cause city inspections.

depending on your definition of cheap, sounds a lot like the Portaspresso Rossa Air (https://portaspresso.com/shop/ols/products/rossa-tr-air-espr...).

You may also like the Espresso Forge, which manages to go even more reductive than what you propose, forgoing the pumping, or any sort of leverage, in favour of a piston for you to push on with a basket on the end.

I recall at launch just about the only implementation detail that _was_ publicly given was that it did not involve tape. That's going to be difficult to dig up a cite on years later.

No idea how it's evolved over the years, so for all I know it's tape based these days.

I've had a copy of his coffee table books for a few years. It's fun for people flipping through a looking at the paintings for places they know - the familiar backdrops, but without the run makers or other clutter.

close, but not quite - Niche is using the burrs out of the Mazzer Kony, the Robur's slightly smaller sibling. 63mm for the Niche/Kony vs either 71mm or 83mm depending on which Robur model.