festus

I know that Chinese brands have a bad reputation, but there are some really good products they make too. I have an ice cream maker (compressor based) that's both cheaper than any of the traditional brands but also has a really fantastic build quality. It wouldn't surprise me if over time some of the Chinese brands start to target western consumers more, and if they actually deliver quality products while the traditional brands aren't then they might gain significant market share.

I suggest checking out their discount brands Kimsufi and SoYouStart. I pay like C$12/month for a dedicated server with a few cores, 8GB of RAM, and 2TB of hard drive space.

Yeah this was a disturbingly common theme in what many of the other panel members were experiencing. Canada has a great public healthcare system - if you have a family doctor (who isn't overbooked). I do feel some optimism though as it seems like this current provincial government is actually making changes that are causing things to head in the right direction, but our panel had a lot of other suggestions that would help alleviate some of the burden on family doctors (the tl;dr is that family doctors provide way more care than they did 50 years ago and are also overburdened with paperwork, on top of an antiquated business model where they have to run a business with employees, bookkeeping, etc.)

I was a member of the panel they had for BC (citizen panel, we weren't experts), if anyone has questions.

Constitutionally, healthcare is a provincial responsibility so provinces have a lot of legal room to maneuver. That said the federal government is allowed to require single payer healthcare, so I'm wondering what's preventing them from giving Alberta the choice to use either a federal version or make their own, but not have nothing.

Related question - how usable (in practical terms) are these cards for running AI models like Llama or Stable Diffusion? I know it's technically possible but I don't want to install a billion AUR packages and a custom kernel, etc.

I think jumping after 1 year is a bit extreme, but after 3 years (my target was 2) I landed a new job I start soon! 47% salary increase plus better benefits and more time off - there's no way my current employer could ever match that!

They literally hit a ship a while back heading to Iran - they "say" they were only targeting ships to Israel but in practice they're targeting every ship that goes through the area.

Yeah they make the same point in their subscribers-only podcast. They did say that they earn enough to be sustainable, so it sounds like they aren't having to dip into their savings anymore. I hope they get more than that though as everyone deserves to thrive.

Yes there will always be demand for coders, but will there be enough demand for the current (increasing) supply? Right now the global number of software developers is growing by about a million per year (total is only 28.7 million) - this means that (very roughly) to keep salaries stable we also need demand for new software to be growing by about 3.5% per year. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but a decade from now you'll need 1.4 jobs for every job now to keep up with the supply.

In the past we had new dynamics to get end-users to spend more and more time using computers and hence software (desktop PCs, video games, internet, mobile phones, social media, etc.). At this point there's so little time left in a consumer's day that tech can grow into that I worry that any further advancements will have to cannibalize from another area; I.e. we've reached peak demand for software.

This patient killed three other couple's embryos, not their own. The clinic is being sued and I assume (can't find confirmation) that this patient is also getting sued.

Everyone in BC should be signing up for Fair PharmaCare; it was hugely helpful for me when I was unemployed for a year after finishing my master's degree, but there are still benefits even if you are employed (they cap how much you should be paying for drugs during the year based on your income).

I earn a good income today (and today just accepted a job offer for an even better income!) and I'm proud to pay back into a program that helped me with expenses when I was down - I hope the NDP succeed and we get a similar program on a federal level.