jadero

The inquiry into the invocation of the emergencies act found that it was justified, although not without problems. Those problems don't seem to have been in any way related to the freezing of accounts.

My opinion is that he's got, as we old-timers like to say, a tough row to hoe. (Or a snowball's chance in hell; take your pick.)

Over the years, I've been with all the big Canadian banks and a couple of different credit union networks. They're all trash, in my opinion. I've sent security notices to all of them and never had a response, nor any evidence that they addressed the problems. TD just happens to be the place we landed after giving up on everyone else.

As for transaction downloads, I couldn't tell you. I gave up on ever having access to my data, so I just record it manually.

Security notice examples:

TD was running their SSL/TLS in a way that made them vulnerable to downgrade attacks.

A credit union finally upgraded their login page to allow a real password instead of just a 6-digit PIN. It took repeated complaints and some customer lobbying to get that, but the new page also blocked access to pasting and autofill, negating the utility of a password manager.

I also use TD. That they still allow only SMS for 2FA should be a crime.

Authentication is only ever as strong as it's weakest link. All the fancy passwords, MFA, passkeys or whatever mean nothing in the face of "I forgot my password" email resets and the like.

I know people who just hammer randomly on the keyboard whenever they get asked for a password, then use the "I forgot my password" system to get "authenticated," providing yet another set of random keystrokes as the new password.

And it's not horrible, I guess. They're using strong passwords. They're never reusing passwords anywhere, not even for successive logins at the same site. They have to be explicitly targeted by someone who is willing to target their email system.

This does nothing to secure against mass breaches, but neither does the strongest authentication system. But, like any of the strongest authentication systems, account takeover requires deliberate targetting.

Credit bureaus are just data brokers in disguise, so they're shady, both in concept and by design.

Porn is part of the sex trade, so shady mostly by perception.

I don't really think it's possible to do anything more than try to safeguard my personal information. But if forced to choose between those two, I'll pick a major porn site over a credit bureau every time.

I wish them all the best, but I think that getting the desired status will just make for one more voice to ignore. We are masters of deafness when it comes to indigenous voices, especially when there might be profits at stake.

This one will, and so will several of the families we know. We're not all anti-mitigation zealots.

Just because we can't afford to do the big ticket stuff like install solar or buy an EV doesn't mean we don't use the money to do what we can.

And then we have the agricultural regions of Saskatchewan, where the only water that doesn't fall from the sky has to flow through Alberta first. So far, Alberta and Saskatchewan seem to have been mostly sharing the pain, but I can't help thinking that those days are coming to an end.

So far we're kind of getting by.

I don't hold out much hope, though, because the rich, the powerful, and the politicians all seem to want strictly private healthcare while the vast majority of the population wants not just effective and accessible public healthcare, but to expand coverage to dental, vision, hearing, and pharmaceuticals.

Never mind the hardships that come from transitioning to a different system, the usual result of this kind of disconnect is violent revolution.

I agree, but until we're a lot closer to zero carbon emissions than we are now, capture technology should be treated as research. Prototypes, even proof of scalability prototypes are fine, but they should not be sucking resources from emission reduction or, worse, trying to replace emission reduction.

Oh yes, the term limits should be reduced. But one thing I like about the appointment system (also easily managed under sortition) is that individual terms are just that, individual. That is, there isn't a wholesale sweep of all sitting members at once, the way there is with Parliament.

I don't know how something like that could be managed in a purely elected body and think it's worth keeping. I suppose there wouldn't really be a problem with having everyone elected via what we now call byelection.

That makes me wonder if party politics, campaigning, and electioneering would change if Parliamentary terms were individualized instead of globalized to the Parliament as a whole.

In principle, I like the idea of having a check on Parliament. Not a block that can prevent things from happening, but something that can slow things down a bit when necessary and maybe cause Parliament to rethink what they're up to or moderate their actions. In general, I think the Senate is reasonably effective at that.

In principle, I like the idea of some kind of regional representation. Not so much that the province with small populations can stand in the way of sound national policy, but enough to limit the exploitation of those provinces in favour of the ones with larger populations. I'm not sure that the Senate has been as effective in that regard as it could have been.

I really like the idea that no Senator can be an active member of any political party. They should all sit as independents. In fact, I would argue that no Senator should ever have been sitting member of Parliament, and maybe not even held party membership for at least a decade.

Finally, I would like to experiment with sortition (random selection instead of political appointments or elections) and a properly constrained, yet not powerless Senate seems like the perfect place to try it out.