A lot of gambling is Canada is privatized. Sports gambling, for example. Most of the money being made in the gambling industry is not in the lotto.
Edit: Also the liquor thing varies by province. Ontario has a crown corporation selling liquor, but in Alberta all liquor sales are by private entities.
Yeah. I don't mind AI, but I'm waiting for it to stabilize and a good work flow being replicable for non-toy problems that should survive and evolve for a long time. I don't think I lose out much by not having 10 agents doing my work for me right now. In 6 months or some years or whatever I can just learn the new way of doing it. It's just exhausting with how much it changes month to month. Do I use it? Yes. Probably suboptimally. I'll learn later, though.
Like the new frontend frameworks coming every week after 2010 sometime. Not jumping on every single one, and waiting until react was declared the winner and learn that worked well. Sure, someone that used it from day 1 had more experience, but one quickly catch up.
> they didn’t have to pay out anything at all, legally.
And still the overwhelming sentiment on HN is that unions are worthless.. When my company had layoffs the laws (thanks to the unions) made it favorable to us without needing the goodwill of the company. Additionally, representatives from the union were involved in all steps and made sure everything went as it should.
I think they're arguing that it should not be up to the companies being nice. Yeah, Epic's layoffs were nice, but a lot of companies give shit or no severance at all.
I've been laid off and I only get paid until the end of the week, and for healthcare the only thing I have access to is overpriced COBRA.
Well I have a job now so it's not as big of a deal. This was awhile ago.
I live in NYC, and when I was laid off from a job in 2023. I looked into the COBRA options, and they wanted something like $3500/month, which is a lot of money. I called around around and I was eventually able to do a program through NYC where we got insurance for free. It actually worked great; we were able to get insurance within a week. NYC ain't perfect but every now and then they come through.
If I get laid off or fired, I will likely check this option again.
Opera had this feature where it knew what the next page for stuff was, and other things. Not sure if it was a rel link or just some clever heuristics. But browsing BB forums with mouse gestures one felt like a God in how one could move around. Next post, next page, next topic without clicking anything.
That was heuristics. It looked for the text "more" or "next" or "->" within an anchor tag. Sometimes it would be fooled if a forum thread or other link had a title containing one of those words.
If you use an extension like vimium, you get this by using the standard [[ and ]] vim motions for this.
Also, using the keyboard for navigation, while it sounds like a chore, is really quite excellent, and I prefer it to the mouse, as crazy as that might sound.
I don't disagree, but I haven't used a traditional mouse in years. I have a rollermouse, so it's just a bar just below the space bar, which I can reach with my thumbs without moving my hands from home row!
Half of the time it's startups subsidizing each other in a circle to have users. Like if you're a VC, you "force" your companies to use tools made by your other companies. So everyone will use the chat app made by one company the VC owns, the CRM software, all the different SaaSes etc. So it's just money moving in a circle, but then all the apps get to claim good sales and user numbers.
This reminds me of another annoyance I have. We have a wall mounted thermostat using batteries at the cabin. It controls how much water is let through from the central heating to the floors by sending some radio signal. I would like to be able to control this remotely, for instance to turn on heating a day before arrival. But the only way to do this is to buy a new unit connected to the pipes as well and upgrade the whole thing, which was quoted like $2k++ and need their app and their subscription. But why can't something just mimic the radio signals? That already works today! Why do I have to rebuild the whole heating setup for this? So stupid when technology locks you in without need.
I'm tempted to have a remote controlled screw driver that can twist the knob remotely or something.
There are often controllers which do indeed just mimic the signals. Doesn't work with every appliance, it depends on the way it's implement and if the manufacturer wanted to make that approach infeasible.
But there absolutely are options to record such Signals and then replicate them via home assistant - I used them before to control a ceiling fan and various infrared devices (same idea, but not a radio there instead a "blaster" - I think it was called)
I didn't set it up again after my last move though, as I couldn't mount the ceiling fan in this apartment and the Infrared devices were just my media center (tv, audio), which are hardly in use currently
Take a look at SwitchBot. They have a device that can tap buttons to solve these kinds of problems. They also have a device for tilting blinds by twisting the rod, which could maybe be modified to twist a knob.
The key with all furnace/heating/cooling automations is to start at the source of heat - figure out what IT needs to do what it wants, and work from there.
They're almost always incredibly simple at the furnace/boiler - you just need to make sure that you never turn the heat on without the pump/blower or whatever is required.
My complicated Eco controller ends up with three outputs: blower on, heat on, cooling on. Three wires.
If it's actually using radio, almost certainly there is a radio receiver unit at your furnace which converts the radio commands to simple voltages on physical wires, likely to power a 24v solenoid. All you need to do is hook in a esp32 or similar to also send those voltages when it receives a command.
I like your approach, it's one I try to use at work as well. Not every problem is a tech problem, many things can be fixed by just talking to humans or changing the process.
In my case the cabin is actually in the town where I grew up, and used as a way to be closer to home and family without overstaying my welcome and also be a bit more free when here (heh). So I do have family that now helps with this, it was mostly in a "can I pay a little not inconvenience them". I arrived here sunday with the heat on and some easter eggs and bunnies on the table put there by my mother, so it's not all bad. :)
Hah, reminds of trying to make a blog as a teenager, 20+ years ago. Built my own CMS in PHP with various features. But never got further than having a few lines of text in the draft state. Most of the time was actually spent on having rounded corners (border-radius didn't exist) with some kinda of glass effect for a cool look (inspired by the then unreleased Windows Longhorn). And named my tool the generic name Publish-it, because publi-shit was funny.
I like when I read something, and it has links to the "main" discussion on HN/reddit/etc. Most blogs don't have a very active comment field, and if I'm reading it a few days late, it's nice to still be able to find other's thoughts on the matter.
> links to the "main" discussion on HN/reddit/etc.
I don't mean to pick on your comment specifically, but it's saddening to see how after these years of the "appification" of the internet and corporations successfully conditioning us to think of terms of their walled gardens, we lost the web.
There shouldn't be a "main" discussion. Our browsers should be able to find these links and present the information in a way that it makes sense to consumer, not the publisher. This gets deeply frustrating for me now that I am working more on ActivityPub and Linked Data. Most of the AP projects are so focused on emulating the closed gardens, they don't even think about building their systems with linking as the primary discovery method.
Linking and discovery, use of AP, etc, are well and good for a pub/sub model -- but you're replying to someone interested in extended discussion / commentary and community (such as we enjoy here on HN). Flatly asserting "There shouldn't be a 'main' discussion" kind of dismisses their stated desire out of hand -- though as I (re)consider it (as I compose this comment) I think you have a valid point.
The POSSE approach implies scattered discussions, almost by definition; posting a link to your blog post on HN or some other site invites discussion on each of those forums, by design. And yeah, the proliferation of siloed communities, each designed to pull users in and keep them there, poses some meaningful challenges to certain visions for what the web could be.
I definitely agree that links matter, and the idea of POSSE has always resonated. People should have a space of their own to share whatever is of most interest and meaning to them. I really like Derek Sivers' take on this w/ his personal site:
One shared his own experience, the other is a direct attack on his kids and the parent. Quite a big difference. The "I pity your kids" is straight up vile.
How is it vile to pity children whose parents regret that they were born? Children whose father loathes spending time with them. Sorry, but maybe some people should feel shame sometimes
Because it's performative pity. The person doesn't really care about that person's kids. They just wanted to attack the poster, and decided to do that through his kids.
My problem with that wording is that it comes across a bit arrogant or "I know better". I think many people _do_ understand what you mean even if they don't have kids, they're just not that interested in those parts of life, which also should be fair.
At one of my earliest jobs (I must have been 19), I had a boss who was incredulous that I didn't drink alcohol and said that I would when I was 21 because it was "part of being an adult". I was pretty sure that making my own decisions rather than letting myself get pressured by others into what they assumed was best for me was a more important part of being an adult, and over a decade later I still don't drink.
Comments like the parent one (pun semi-intended) basically sound the same to me as what my boss had said to me that day. Assuming that your own experience is universal is a flawed way to view the world, even if your experience is relatively common. If there are exceptions, it's not going to be easy to see them if you have an assumption already about it being universal, and if the people in the majority are loud enough and annoying enough about it, those who aren't will be even more incentivized not to share their experiences with you; I'd argue that people who regret having kids will potentially be reluctant to publicly say so. Most importantly, doing something because of societal pressure rather than genuine desire is going to greatly reduce the chance that someone truly finds it fulfilling, and there's an emotional cost for children who are raised by parents who basically regret having them.
It's totally reasonable to say "I never truly understood how much I'd enjoy having kids until I did, and I suspect it's the same for a lot of other parents". There's no reason to go further than that unless you're pushing an idealogy rather than actually trying to say something you know is correct.
My problem with that problem is that, well, people who have kids definitionally know (better?) about having them. Like being able to experience a book in its original version vs a translation.
It's okay if you don't want to learn Spanish, but when people discuss the struggles and delights of reading Cien Años de Soledad they're not necessarily being arrogant, just stating their lived experience.
But do you also go around and claim everyone that hasn't read that book in Spanish is losing out in life, or do you also recognize it's just not for everyone?
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