pcc

Fun little exercise: while reading above, see what happens when mentally substituting “magic” with “AI”, words like “enchantments” with “algorithms” and so on.

Wondering if its perhaps two different subsets of people, with differing opinions that haven’t so much shifted, as that primarily just one’s been highly motivated to engage at a time? (In the same way that say surveys might draw disproportionately more engagement from those that feel extremely dissatisfied)

Or do you feel more that its a wholesale shift?

I don't feel as if there was so much of a dominant paradigm back in 1987, when RISC OS first came out, at least not outside of the US?

I recall that period more as a melting pot of ideas and approaches from lots of manufacturers independently trying to figure out what paradigms might stick.

There were many disparate approaches to text-based OSs: MS-DOS, Acorn MOS on the BBC which is the predecessor of the shell found in RISC OS, Sinclair, Atari, etc. Likewise, separate approaches to GUIs: Mac, Gem, RISC OS / Arthur, the Amiga, etc. Windows 2. Teams from Acorn, Research Machines, Sinclair etc all basically did things in their own way.

While the Macintosh UI paradigm was considered dominant in some market segments at the time (eg DTP), there wasn't yet a universal expectation around how GUIs would work. That started happening more after Windows 3 came out, in 1990 iirc.

Certainly there must have been cross-pollination of ideas between these different groups. Pretty sure these Docks and Task Bars with icons, that we all have at the bottom of our screens now, was an idea first seen in RISC OS.

I'm not advocating any side here, I'm simply relaying what is actually happening on the ground, because the prevailing opinion here seems to be getting shaped by a very selective cherry picking of ideas that don't represent the reality on the ground here.

In the current conditions as you can imagine there is a lot of chatter on social media from people trying to find and share up to date information. A lot of this info is by definition hearsay, and so news articles are often getting referenced when a source of authoritative info is needed. I guess that is because the reporters working for those news orgs are on the ground at the press conferences, working the phones, working their networks of contacts, and working to get verification on when there are insufficient sources to a report. So what they bring here is some combination of a measure of trust, access to info before it hits official government pages, and aggregating of many diverse sources of into fewer places.

These news orgs are not the ones you're thinking of; they're our local community news outlets that have no paywalls and who run totally open/free sites supported by display ads on their sites.

Their articles are in many cases ahead of the official info on government sites. As an example, overnight reporting on one of these news sites sourced updates about the fireline hours before the official update is set to hit the government site, comments from gvt meteorologist about the smoke visibility around the airport which gives us some sense of when the water bombers will be able to fly again, again hours before this info will become officially available, last-minute changes in garbage collection info that is more current than what's on the government site, updates about the drinkability of water and so forth. We learnt from them first that some commercial flights at the airport would resume overnight, and so on.

No matter what you might generally think about reporters and news sites during "normal" times - right now these guys seem to be doing an amazing job of delivering exactly this -- actual news -- making it an extremely valuable resource.

So, Meta's "interference" is causing a lot of people irritation by not allowing us to share links to our community news org articles in private groups, instead forcing people to reference articles by screenshot, description etc. Surely it's inevitable that for some this irritation will lead to calls to boycott FB.

Not sure where the statements about factual correctness come from because the text of C18 is publicly available. It doesn't even contain the word "link". It does speak a lot about "content". And again, it isn't actually in effect yet. Yes the idea of "linking" is one interpretation of one aspect of C18 that pertains to "access of content" -- a cherry picked one that seems calculated to stir up outrage since C18 at least to me reads far more about the use of the content itself.

I've also never seen the Yellow Pages try to dynamically answer questions about a business, so people don't have to call that business, by automatically extracting parts of collateral the business authored but didn't give permission to use in that way.

Rather, the Yellow Pages has a formal spec/interface where they and the business can agree on the extent of what is OK to show.

And this seems to me exactly what C18 is trying to establish: that Meta et all can't simply extract as much out of a news article as they wish, but that there is a framework (with rules that remain to be drafted) where they must agree with the news orgs, what level of summary they can reproduce for free. Not much different than what Apple News presumably already has in place. Except Meta is refusing even to engage in this.

Is C18 perfect? No. Are news orgs in general perfect? Hell no. Is there lobbying and cronyism related to the legacy orgs? Probably. Again I'm not arguing a specific side here, I am simply pointing out that the governing narrative in this thread seems one sided, which always makes me wonder in who's interest that is. Canada hasn't actually put into effect any law banning Meta from linking to news. Claims that that is what the plan is, would be grossly oversimplifying. Meta is not a paragon of virtue here acting on behalf of the freedom of the community at large, it is simply "negotiating" in its sole interest, and so there should be no surprise now that some in the community will advocate for us to "negotiate" back.

Again I go back to the opening thought about Google. There is a larger issue at work here than just the news and just Canada.

Seems like a lot of vitriol and misunderstanding in these comments, so a few thoughts as someone directly affected by the McDougall Creek fire.

Imagine you run a business, doesn’t matter what kind. Prospects look up your service on, say, Google, where Google in many cases now shows them enough of an extract of your content so that they may never even have to click through to your page to learn about what you do. So you can never analyze, ab test, tag, sign up, retarget or monetize these otherwise-visitors who are no longer clicking through. Effectively Google can be argued to be leveraging your content to make their own page stickier at your expense, eg to sell more ads. How would this make you feel? Turns out many people have a real problem with this, in 2019 I realized this at a telco conference where Rand Fishkin in a keynote was advocating people take this to their members of congress.

Firstly, Bill C18 is not even in effect yet. Secondly, its primarily concerned with the intermediaries reproducing the copyrighted news content or summaries/extracts on their own sites, which is the same situation as above where visitors never come to your site because your content is being reproduced/extracted/summarized elsewhere outside of your control. The matter of links to news articles is one interpretation of the secondary concept of “facilitating access” but as already explained in some of the comments here, thats not actually the core driver of this bill and Meta etc are refusing even to participate in the drafting of the regulations around that despite being invited to do so.

On the ground, here is what is happening today: neighbours evacuated or on alert are posting questions in private neighbourhood groups, on everything from food access, water use to garbage collection, and when answers are behind news articles, Meta is stopping other neighbours from posting links to those articles in response. (Incidentally, use of news in private discussion groups is something specifically exempted by C18).

This “interference” is purposeful by Meta as a calculated protest against a bill that is not yet in effect and isn’t about that use case. Yes, some might call this kind of behaviour bullying.

They can of course do what they want, they’re not under any obligation to let anyone communicate anything. Its really just a reminder to everyone that they’re driven entirely by self interest and not the interests of whichever communities they choose to operate in. By implication this makes them unreliable as an emergency communication utility or as a foundational element of community fabric.

With acoustic instruments, sympathetic resonance can play a big role in the overall colour, because eg unplayed undamped strings also respond according to their harmonic likeness to the presence of other excited frequencies.

For example, on a piano if you undamp but don't sound one C, by setting the key down gently and holding it, then strike the C an octave below, the higher C will start ringing quite audibly and add its own partials, the same happens also of course to a lesser degree if you say undamp the G an octave + 5th above the C you're striking. This happens all the time during normal piano playing, because pianists purposefully hold long-duration keys down, and the sustain pedal keeps undamped the notes already played.

It can also work in the "downward" direction for example on the violin where the open strings are E A D G with E the highest, the well known Vivaldi A minor concerto (eg Suzuki book 4) opens with shifting on that E string to eg 3rd position to play the A which is an octave higher than the open A string. To the extent you get this perfectly in tune, presuming a properly tuned violin of sufficient quality, the open A string ie an octave lower will start "ringing" as will the D below that to a lesser degree; and if you then subsequently damp those open strings, it changes the sound significantly. This "ringing" effect is quite important to violinists in developing their sense of tuning and calibrating exactly where to set their fingers.

IANAL but also there is a specific list of classes (categories) that have to be selected from when seeking to register a trademark, design mark etc and afaik protection then applies only within those categories.

In this case they have applied for Nice classes 9 and 42.

I'm not sure, but also seem to recall that protection within those classes would be further limited to the scope of what they covered in the description they provided for each class during application.

Anyways, point it is that it's in any event really hard to see how having a fairly nondescript domain name with a blank web page could ever be construed as purveying anything in either Nice class 9 or 42.

(Eg, for all we know, such domain name might be referring to some new kind of industrial oil or lubricant, which would be Nice class 4...)

It's also useful to consider that there are contexts where the law can negate the validity of a trademark based on the registrant's lack of actively "practicing" it (including during the period between application and it being granted), or protecting it. So there's an inherent incentive for companies to be a bit "trigger happy" in staking their claim to "practicing" the band as well as acting to protect it. Although it does seem very preemptive in this case.

Wondering if anyone on this thread who’s felt this way has been able to try out biphasic sleep and can report if it made a difference? The idea of a “second sleep” after an hour or so awake seems to be gaining prevalence in popular media as something humans used to do naturally.

OT, but for months already, Googling for "ngn/k" also displays a totally non-sensical calculator result, with no apparent way to report, like:

1 Nigerian naira / Boltzmann constant = 1.75931815 × 10^20 m^-2 kg^-1 s^2 K U.S. dollars

If memory serves that also involved an expired certificate

As the parent of a violinist and a violist, I find the role of the teacher for aspects like holding the instrument, to be less like "teaching" and much more like "debugging".

Kids grow, and every person's body is different: even when they've been playing for 10+ years and have reached the most advanced levels, they're still asking their teachers and fellow musicians to "debug" posture - because subtle changes can have outsize impact. This is why master classes exist, for instance.

There are all kinds of tools in this debugging toolkit. Some of them are rather tactile, such as feeling how much force is being transferred from the hand to the tip of the bow, feeling how "soft" the bow-hand is being held, feeling how much the bow arm's elbow is being allowed to sink under its own weight, or how much the shoulder is being tensed - because muscle tension can be a huge issue for string players. Not to mention the huge number of minute adjustments that can be made to various angles and might involve tweaks to shoulder rests, chin rests and so on.

Right now teachers have to debug, without being able to use their hands. A tall order for anyone. Just imagine being asked to debug software without being able to use your hands, or to poke at the system: no attaching a debugger, no inserting print statements - all you can do is give verbal inputs and observe outputs. It's a huge responsibility, when failing to debug, or getting it wrong, can have serious consequences (life-long problems with pain, for example).

Some teachers are much better than others at such "debugging", so yes from that perspective it sure would be nifty to invent some technology that guarantees more consistent results. But is it realistic? Every body is different physically, and the human touch and expertise plays a major role.

So, I can't help but think it would actually be a simpler problem to create an AI that can reliably debug software, vs creating AI that can reliably debug a musician's physical relationship to their instrument.

Yes it's very much mechanically possible to use 2 pedals on the piano at the same time; it's not actually that uncommon.

For organists, these days pipe organs are usually outfit with a sequencer that allows the organist to program a list of registration changes (the combination of pipes/stops used) ahead of time; the organist then advances through the sequence of registrations, by bumping a bumper pedal with the side of their foot, or by pushing a toe stud pedal. Sometimes there are multiple toe stud pedals, which either allow for jumping straight to a specific combination, or for using the closest one as the program advance.

Canadian customers paying in USD: I think it depends on the type of market and product. We've found competitive advantage in offering CAD pricing stability to our Canadian customers (B2B, both services and physical goods).

SR&ED: We've used it to great effect, and have never used a consultant. The rules are actually not that complicated; CRA presents seminars on how to determine what is eligible, as well as on how to complete the T661. It's a small time investment to attend those to determine if&how SR&ED can work for you. Documentation, it depends: lab notebooks and a spreadsheet of hours can go pretty far. They've tightened up process on first time claimants (all go through review now afaik), but at the same time they've introduced programs for first timers where you can get an opinion on eligibility ahead of time and can then check in with them periodically during the first period for their ongoing evaluation and comment, in which case they guarantee no surprises during the review. As always YMMV: for us SR&ED had the same effect as outsourcing our dev to a far lower cost country, but effectiveness is reduced if largely doing things like crud apps, or with single employees who are also substantial shareholders.

Hi pgg; fellow Canadian here, have been in somewhat similar position; feel free to reach out (email is in profile).

Will this be a services business (e.g. consulting/work for hire) or selling of products/services?

There are many factors involved in the decision, e.g.:

- If you incorporate in Canada, you may find you need to open a USD-denominated account with your bank here to avoid currency losses. You would probably also need a CAD account, and for selling in Canada you would need to account for GST and possibly provincial tax, depending on where you're based, since you would have a presence here. You could elect with CRA that your books are denominated in USD -- but be aware that multi currency accounting adds an extra layer of complexity to your life. With 50% shareholding defined up front, the bank here is probably going to want to have signatures from both shareholders to set up an account.

- If you are soliciting sales in the US, you may be considered to have "nexus" in the US, probably based on the state of your co-founder (at least initially). That may mean reporting/filing obligations in that state, particularly if your sales go over a certain level. There are also obligations regarding tax filings in other states if you or co-founder travel there enough and sales there are high enough. Certain states are actively going after Canadian companies for these filings with heavy penalties. There comes a point where, to trade in the US, it is arguably just simpler to be incorporated in the US for those transactions. It is relatively easy to incorporate in the US (recommend Delaware) but the corporation will still need to be aware of its tax filing obligations in other states, particularly in the state your co-founder is based.

- Depending on how you're planning on taking payments, it may be useful to know that e.g. Stripe will allow you to bill in USD and settle into a USD-denominated account in Canada (or in CAD/USD and settle into a CAD-denominated account with conversion as needed). But you should know that settlement times are different if you are settling to an account in Canada, vs an account in the US. IIRC Stripe starts out as taking 7 days to settle to an account in Canada, the shortest we've been able to get that to was 4 days after we built up some history. By contrast, we get our charges to US-based bank account settled in 2 days.

- If you would be eligible to claim R&D tax credits, my sense is that (at least at present) the Canadian SR&ED scheme is easier/better than the US equivalent, both in terms of what you can get back and the amount of effort/time it takes. In either case, claiming an R&D credit would typically be dependent on being incorporated and running payroll in that country.

- Your Canadian customers are probably going to expect/prefer to be dealing in CAD (with proper GST/HST/PST etc) with a Canadian company and bank. Your US customers are probably going to expect to be dealing in USD with a US-based company and bank. If you are physically shipping products, know that US customers in particular don't like cross-border shipments for several reasons (including that they are more expensive).

- It can be helpful to have separate CAD and USD credit cards.

- There are certain kinds of financing that are way easier to access when incorporated in the US. And others that are easier when incorporated in Canada.

So really what you are doing is optimizing for complexity, taxes, movement of currency, cash flow, filing overheads etc over all those factors.

While it really needs more info about your specific opportunity, one thought is to consider incorporating separately in both countries (eventually as the business grows, it may well end up there anyway). You could even start by you owing 100% of the Canadian company, your co-founder 100% of the US company, and having a simple business agreement between the two companies regarding how the name is controlled/shared/owned, and how profit is shared (e.g. on the basis of royalties) etc. Of course you could also set it up as one being subsidiary of another, but not doing that at the outset, will probably make it easier for you to start out.

Wiener/LMS filter

As a sidebar, the US has its own 'supply management'-style policies in place for markets like sugar, where Canada's access was limited to 0.1% of the market, pre-USMCA. [0]

I wonder what will end having greater economic impact in the long run: the relatively minor 'tweaks' USMCA makes in these markets, or the extent to which Mr T has shaken the foundations of Canadians' relationship with the US.

[0] https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/agriculture/f...

A significant factor, which is perhaps not brought up often enough, is the implicit assumption that everything is always going to be 100% linear.

In the textbook case, more than 16 bits per sample might just seem to lower the noise floor. However this is based on the assumption that the voltage spacing is exactly the same for every increment in the sample word -- and this is simply not going to be true in the real world.

This applies to both axes: at 44.1kHz, no clock tick is going to be precisely equally spaced from every other.

In other words, every A/D and D/A process is introducing non-linear behaviour and thus artefacts that change according to the actual input, as a concern quite outside that of the noise floor or the Nyquist limit.

Increasing the bit depth and sample rate helps reduce the effects of such non-linearities.

'Unschooling' is an educational method/philosophy.

Rather than the conventional approach of defined courses / curricula, it encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, and learning through natural life experiences.

For example as a result of something the child experiences, the child may have a sudden interest in Greek Mythology, which would then be explored at that point.

While its certainly a form of home education, it is only a subset of homeschoolers that follow this method; many (most?) homeschoolers continue to follow structured curricula similar to conventional schooling.

In principle anyone with eligible work can apply. Its even possible for unincorporated individuals to claim SR&ED on personal tax.

I would recommend though that you go to one of the public info sessions held in your area, since there are various angles to be aware of, that will help you optimize your claim. For example:

- a small Canadian corp typically gets a better rate than a claim on personal tax;

- if you're a "specified employee" (meaning you own 10% or more of the corp) they place certain caps on things like how much of the "proxy amount" you can apply in your claim

- a lot of the claim revolves around how much of your expenses was for eligible work. You typically have to be careful that a founder who is also doing marketing etc, is only claiming for the portion of time spent on the R&D part.

They go into all of this in the public info sessions, and they typically have specialists from various SR&ED areas available to answer pretty much any question.

You can also call them on various info lines, e.g. they offer a "first-time claimant" service where they try to make it easier for people looking at doing a first SR&ED claim, even coming out to visit your business if helpful.

They also offer a "preclaim project review" service where they'll give you a prelim opinion on the eligibility of a project, without you having to file a formal claim. (While this is not guarantee, it can for instance be used while raising funding, to demonstrate to prospective investors that you have a reasonable expectation of getting SR&ED support).

In fact there are a lot of public info sessions coming up in the near future: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/smnr-eng.html

CRA at their info sessions will tell you that they don't understand why more people don't just write their own claims.

I think people looking at it from the outside, or for the first time, easily feel intimidated ("its the taxman!").

The reality is that CRA does want to work with you -- e.g. if you go to the info sessions, you can talk directly to the actual people running the SR&ED program, and they genuinely want to reward innovation and help you maximize the money you can get out, while ensuring that taxpayers (who are footing the bill) are looked after.

For example:

- besides the salaries paid for eligible work, you can also also claim the proportion of certain overhead expenses related to that work. Or, you can just choose to use the "proxy method" where they basically take the eligible salaries and tack on another 65%. This can be huge, and people do ask the question: "that extra 65% may end up being way more than my actual overheads". CRA's response: the law allows you to pick either, so pick the one that provides the most benefit to your business.

- a CRA officer once mentioned to me that they were extremely frustrated by being unable to approve a particular claim where the work seemed good, but there was insufficient documentary proof. After many months of continually going back and asking "are you sure you cannot dig up any documentation", someone at the company happened to mention that there had been an internal email conversation thread about the work -- and this ended up providing all the documentation the CRA needed to approve the claim.

Its also worth noting that SR&ED (specifically the ED part which is typically applicable to startups), only cares that you are seeking, systematically and in the face of technical uncertainty, for technical advancement within your organization.

They don't care whether the outcome of this search is successful or not.

This means you have the incentive to risk the funds on such an endeavour, as you can get the credit despite your success or failure.

Risk real money, and you'll get a refundable tax credit with a chq in the mail.

Risk "virtual" money (e.g. accrue a salary that you might only pay out later provided you have sufficient cash flow), and you get credits that can be carried and applied in years when you had/have real money.

One of the implications, is that if things end up going sideways, you still have the option to e.g. switch your startup to doing something else (like contract work), apply the old credits to the new money and recover something of your risk.

And also it can work out to a fair bit more than 20 - 35% -- especially if you can use the proxy method for overhead expenses.

This has not been my experience at all, over the past few years.

Go to an info session to find out exactly what CRA's eligibility rules are. It is not that difficult to apply. Generally I have found their attitude to be "the money is there and we really want to give it to you -- because it comes from the taxpayer we just need to do due diligence that what you are claiming is in accordance with the tax act"

Disagree completely about (5) in the context of SR&ED in Canada.

It is actually pretty easy -- you might spend a few days out of a whole year to pull it together, and get back back 2/3 of your R&D expenditure. Surprised that more start-ups don't go for this.

Really surprised by all the negative comments around (5) here.

With SR&ED its possible to get back a substantial amount (like 2/3) of the money you invested into development. Another way of looking at it, is that it's like doing your development at offshore rates, except working with local talent.

In fact, it self-propagates: Fund your initial development, get back a portion via SR&ED, use that toward development, get back a portion via SR&ED etc.

Our start-up has really benefited from this, and frankly I don't understand why any company (big or small) who has an eligible project would not apply for this.

It is actually reasonably easy to find out what CRA is looking for, by attending a CRA public information session or two, and then filling out the paperwork yourself. Consultants "increase the odds of success" purely because they understand what the CRA is looking for -- but it really is not that complicated and can be picked up easily just by going to an info session.

If you can't be bothered to spend the time doing it yourself, then who's to say its not worth giving up 25% of the 2/3 you could get back.

Yes generally you do. But you are only obligated to make source available to parties to whom you distribute the binaries you've built.

Typically a web app that generates and serves html, would not be 'distributing' the derivative work, so there would be no source obligation (GPLv2; AGPL etc changes this).

If its a web app that includes client-side js that in turn relies on a particular server-side API, things are perhaps less clear-cut.

He was talking about companies in general tweaking linux for their particular uses.

Indeed, if you focus on the preceding bit about Google's in-house linux for their own servers, then there would be no distribution and arguably GPL2 could not force those modifications to be made public.

But I would imagine that he's probably quite versed in GPL2 and knows this -- so since he brought it up specifically, it suggests he was probably thinking at that point more about cases where distribution does happen (e.g. Android, embedded etc).

Perhaps he considers it a 'significant change' primarily if there's some sort of distribution ;)

If you copy or distribute the derivate work in either object code or executable form, you are obliged to make the source available.

Arguably anyone who has a phone, has had a copy in executable form distributed to them, and can ask for the source.

> Any computer program could be performed with pencil and paper, by getting a big file folder to simulate RAM, indexing it by numbers, and performing assembly instructions by hand with post-it notes as registers

Indeed. But surely if the purpose of the algorithm is something like "find whether this combination exists in a set of millions / billions of records within a tractable time" then it cannot possibly be done by hand in a tractable/practical way -- and it will fail this test?

ianal, but would it not stand to reason that if the algorithmic method exists to incorporate/address computability specifically; then by implication the "human mind/pen&paper" criteria could only pass if performable under the same constraint?

For example, if the purpose of the method specifically relates to real time graphics processing (ie the real time constraint is a fundamental aspect of the method) -- then the expectation would be that the pen&paper test would have to be able to achieve the same constraint (ie calculable in real time) for it to invalidate the claim of the method?