MartianSquirrel

From a business point of view it's more like...

Usually companies use blogs as marketing tools to drive traffic to their websites. I might be wrong, but in the case of Coinbase I have never really seen anything they wrote that was precisely intended at selling a product. It's usually more informative, and shows they are trying to be more of a positive force in the industry compared to a dominant one. Kudos on them if it is the intent, and I guess it would explain the choice of platform instead of investing time and assets in developing their own.

Fair enough, that part did not register as OP said it was "anecdotical" and in his experience

I did not mentionned political affiliations. I don't understand why everyone seems to focus on politics recently. Yes, there have been troubling events, but the world did not stop revolving

I would tend to think the education level also plays a role, and considering wealthier individuals usually have a better access to education/are more educated (read correlation not causation here), said individuals might have a better grasp off what is happening.

Edit: Remote working is also easier when you have an office job

Edit 2: I hope more research like this will come out so we can prepare and protect the ones who are more at risk when the next pandemic comes. Uderstanding the risk factors and how a disease spreads is the first step of debugging it. Sadly it is the first pandemic where we have the necessary tools to track all the information and analyse it. We have been lucky the death rate was not much higher

It's not a problem you face often with a single payer system (or anything similar)

I cannot say for sure. My personal income is the same I would get in Toronto, but it's anecdotal. I know they are slightly lower on average, but when you factor in the cost of living (rent is 2x higher in TO) it is probably very similar. On the other side, I would say the quality of life is much better in MTL, as the public transportation is better, people do not live as far and are closer to the various activities, etc.

Long term benefits? check

Good for our constituants? check

Good for whoever pays for my campaign? check

Oh, you say it will jeopardize my reelection? fuggetaboutit /s

Canada has been at it for quite a while, otherwise the economy would be stagnating. And it has the advantage that it can chose its immigrants based on the market's needs. Compared to other countries, people coming to canada are also highly skilled:

Over half of recent immigrants have a bachelor's degree or higher [0] Recent immigrants were even more likely to have a master's or doctorate degree, with 16.7% of them holding these graduate degrees in 2016. [0]

[0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/daily-quotidien/171129/dq...

It was indeed a weird model, I think the tech scene here always looked at eAI like some type of outcast, leaving them alone.

But it drew attention to the AI scene, universities received massive funding in AI which is fantastic, startups grew around it, VCs started investing more in MTL(not only because of them, but it did play a role), FAANGS expanded their offices and openned AI labs downtown and in the mile-end.

I was not a fan, but the publicity they received has definetly been good for the scene.

Shush! Don't tell them about the little hill! It's only one of them on the other side anyways, we can ignore it... here we go, MTL only has 4 universities now /s

Quebec is weird, true, but I tend to think of the Montreal Metropolitan Area as some sort of semi independant micro state

It is not legally required, strongly advised by the government. It would go against Section 2 of the Canadian constituion to discriminate on a language basis.

The OQLF asks for companies to use french terminology and tools where possible (the tech sector blatantly ignores it, I've always worked in english, even with french co-workers) and to offer a french translation on signs, menus and documentations in stores.

Not anymore, not in tech at least. Every single company is looking to hire, they don't have the luxury of cherry picking over languages.

The provincial government can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but they tend not to mess with startups or the tech sector.

My partner is running an interior design business, she is an immigrant, does not have her citizenship/PR yet, with a mediocre french and never really had problems with discrimination or legislation. All she had to do was to make sure every written signs had a french translation somewhere on them, which is common here

You are right, the legislation on that part is counterproductive, but there are many ways around, especially for tech workers.

And tbh we alway used english at work considering some of our team mates didn't speak french.

Bonus: there are 56 craft breweries on the island alone

Disclaimer: Clearly biased, I am from Montreal.

That’s part of why I think that if any city in Canada has the potential to actually develop a Bay Area grade startup scene (smaller, sure, but actually the real thing), it’s clearly Montreal

I would have to agree with the conclusion of this article, Montreal has:

(i) 5 universities very close to each other(i.e. 10 to 20 minutes walk from each other) + Great public transport

(ii) Lots of government subsidies for startups, on municipal, provincial and federal levels

(iii) Small tech companies and startups can afford rent downtown (or in the mile-end), where other tech companies and universities are located. (I also have a 1200sf apt downtown for 1/6th the price of SF)

(iiii) It's an amazing market where to fail quickly. Quebec is some sort of small scale self-sufficient society where you can experiment before scaling. And outsiders tend not to look at failures in the Quebec startup scene

(iiiii) It's surprisingly easy to get funding from the massive government investment funds(IQ, CDPQ, BDC), and they have been focusing more on the startup scene lately.

(iiiiii) The french Canadian "culture" tends to be bolder and more dynamic than what you would expect in the rest of Canada. Can't hurt the ecosystem if you're expected to move fast and fail quick

(iiiiiii) Move to MTL already, we want more startups!

PrEP might be available, but there are still countries where it is not easily accessible, and where HIV is still spreading.

https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/why-the-hiv-epidemic...

At first glance I thought it would be another post about recent events. Still decided to give it a try.

It is surprisingly interesting, pointing out incongruences, mostly regarding the "anti-social media" business model and quite a few details we don't usually see in the medias.

E.g. potential links with russia[0]; The first thousands of accounts set up in russia; One of the shareholding LLC was set up by the US president's attorney's former firm... while said attorney was frequently travelling to Russia.

Which, if true, could prove to be an entertaining story in the next few months. It could also be a massive security threat on top of a very creative way of destabilising a foreign government.

[0] https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327269280895918086

[-1] Bonus, related: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/14/7561

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25357315

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13755673

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16582136

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18224227

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25679354

[7] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25692617

[8]: I'm not alone! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25501216

No, the job market isn't zero sum. If the west produces more goods/services it needs a higher input of lesser tier goods and services to which value can be added.

Yes, but no.

Automation could, should and will bring back more manufacturing towards the west, in the sense that the west will produce more goods, in terms of net quantity/value compared to today.

It does not necessarily mean more jobs.

It does not mean the west will produce a higher percentage of global products.

Paul Krugman, amongst others, has written about the subject, I will try to link articles once I get home.

Quick edit: example: GM produces more cars than before the crisis but employs less people

Edit 2: here's one https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/krugman-trade-job...

25! Happy new year!

I started reading the title and almost had a heart attack thinking Donald Knuth died

Edit: Title was "Professor Donald Knuth on Writing and More, an Int..."

I'd very much recommend it Same here!

I've bought myself a Surface Laptop 3 (15", i7 version) 11 months ago. I had been looking for a laptop powerful enough to code on, that would look "premium" for business purposes, lightweight and the charge had to last a full workday(or more). This laptop checked all the boxes, and performed wonderfully since then. To the extend that now we're considering getting it for our employees.

Genuine question: Have you considered buying out your co-founder instead? You seem to have a general undestanding of the figures you can make through advertisement. I'd suggest doing more research on that, maybe meeting with a consulting/advisor CFO who could help you make a case for it. Then you could go for a loan to buy your co-founder out, or meet with the investors to have him removed/replaced with someone who's gonna put the business first.

The demand gets higher, therefore a healthy market will move towards a supply/demand equilibrium.

There are creative ways to go around most problems, given the incentives are strong enough. i.e. we all live underground /s

On the other side, too much regulation can prove to be a strong disincentive. In this case I expect architecture or density requirements, amongst other things, in cities like Amsterdam to cool down the market, maybe a bit too much.

1. They disrupted the hospitality industry, which used to be much more powerful than it is today, as it now weighs less in tourism numbers.

I don't necessarily think this is bad, disruption is often a sign of optimization.

2. Then there are markets where airbnbs have caused apartment buying and rental prices to go up much faster than what they should have, bringing millennials further away from home ownership. (not going to go into people getting evicted for landlords to open airbnbs, but deserves a quick mention)

This one is more tricky, as it is not strictly bad, but definitely not good. It tends to be good for some sectors of the economy (i.e. tourism, restauration, culture, etc.) As a whole(and in theory) it should drag -with some delays- the construction industry into building more housing units at a faster pace. Now, considering the economy as a whole was very good pre-pandemic and we were near full employment, construction companies likely had trouble finding more qualified workers to fulfill the demand. Government incentives were also either not present or not strong enough for new 'affordable' housing to be build in cities.

I know I went up fairly quickly over these issues, there is so much more going on, I strongly suggest reading/researching more about the various issues as there are definitely valuable startup ideas hiding in there.

Overall, I have no doubts the balance will be reached in the following decades: (i)Regulations to limit the numbers of airbnbs, coupled with permits and taxes. (ii)Strong government incentives to build more housing as I doubt people leave the cities for good following the pandemic, let alone remote working remaining the standard. (iii)Airbnb modifying it's business model. i.e. keeping the actual airbnbs, but potentially acquiring hotel chains amongst other things.

Beware of the Decentralized Denial of Monoliths

This

Requiring frequent "calibration" printouts that use vast amounts of ink

I use my personal printer once every 2 months, on average, and every single time it prints the calibration page.

It would make much more sense from a UX point of view if it just asked if I want to calibrate instead of forcing me to waste ink, paper, time and patience in the process.

The fun thing is, it probably brings these two countries closer to peace than war, the same way having children play together makes it easier to develop a friendship

Except for the climate change part.

This is out of context. Same thing could be said with the advent of the internet and massive energy consumption that came with it. The debate here is about the effect the technology had on day to day human lives, not on the optimization of it afterwards.