
Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City - ihsw2
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-08/alphabet-s-sidewalk-labs-eyes-toronto-for-its-digital-city
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jtraffic
"People thought it was crazy when Google decided to connect all the world’s
information"

I'd love to see a citation for this. I sort of doubt, at the moment, that
anyone seriously said "Google is crazy for trying to connect the world's
information." The implication is that I find the comparison to be a bit silly.

The self driving car comparison is more accurate but much less informative: we
still don't know how it will turn out.

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passive
Maybe it's poor phrasing, and the incredulity was about Google's ability to
accomplish such a goal?

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moomin
It's actually just dumb. It's not like Google ever pioneered any endeavour.
They've merely done what Altavista and Yahoo did, only better.

Equally, they don't actually connect all the world's information. Just
sections of it where it's profitable to do so.

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vtange
I can't help but notice right now that Toronto's name has been increasingly
pushed as some sort of "next tech centre" (well, many cities in the world want
to be something like that). Can someone who's actually there fill me in on
what's happening there? How does Toronto's scene compare to say, New York or
Seattle?

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rckrd
The University of Toronto is home to Geoffrey Hinton and his research lab.
Hinton was the first to use backpropagation for machine learning and a lot of
the techniques used today were pioneered by his lab. He is also manages the
Google Brain team in Toronto.

Yann LeCun, the director of AI at Facebook, also did a postdoc at Toronto.

[0]
[http://learning.cs.toronto.edu:40292/people#Faculty](http://learning.cs.toronto.edu:40292/people#Faculty)

[1] [http://yann.lecun.com/](http://yann.lecun.com/)

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scosman
Also, Hinton (and others) are launching a giant AI labs. Lots of government
and partner funding (Google, Nvidia, etc).

[http://vectorinstitute.ai/](http://vectorinstitute.ai/)

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sanswork
I'm really excited for all the great stuff finally getting done on the
waterfront in Toronto. Even before I left a few years ago you could
comfortably walk from around the airport up to Sherbourne almost entirely
along the water edge. This will push that to Parliament and link up the
Distillery district. I don't imagine the storage lot next to Cherry st will
last long after that.

A far cry from my younger years where it was basically mud parking lots and
heavy equipment east of redpath.

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theCricketer
Out of curiousity and so we can all concretely imagine how Sidewalk Labs plans
to transform cities, can someone explain what are the speicific changes and
associated benefits in this new kind of city? It mentions, autonomous transit,
ride sharing, cheaper housing (how?). Can someone paint a fuller picture of
what will be new and how it will be beneficial.

I'm not skeptical at all, in fact I'm very hopeful. I just want to be able to
picture the new kind of city more concretely.

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tenpies
Personally I'm interested in seeing the privacy impact assessment if there is
an actual proposal. This isn't Google doing it out of some utopian goodness of
their heart. Everything in those 12 blocks will be logged, analyzed, and sold
to advertisers.

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mikerice
Yeah I mean I get why people in Toronto are excited, but not a single person
is thinking of privacy implications. It grosses me out.

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passive
C'mon Alphabet, bring this to Halifax!

The land will be much cheaper, we've got a huge problem with students fleeing
for greener pastures, and we have one of the best connected cities in the
country.

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joshlemer
Best connected in what way?

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passive
Internet services. We had one of the first ADSL deployments in North America,
and while we are still stuck with two real providers, speeds and prices are
pretty good, and they have mostly given up on caps.

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verelo
Toronto is certainly booming today, hiring is hard, houses are getting
expensive and everyone is talking about joining in on the fun...meanwhile I
live here and love it, please take your shoes off at the door.

I'm a touch worried this will end up like the World Fair and we'll end up with
a collection of derelict and unwanted "high tech" artefacts left for the
original inhabitants to cleanup. I just don't trust Alphabet to act in a
responsible way when it comes to respecting cities that real people live in.

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eigenvector
> He’s also hinted at tech’s ability to overhaul zoning rules and control
> housing costs, a particular interest of Alphabet’s Page.

Yeah, right. Toronto is one of the most retrograde cities on housing
intensification (it still hasn't intensified around the Bloor-Danforth subway
that was built a generation ago)[1]. In fact many neighbourhoods are losing
population as the region grows due to extremely restrictive zoning rules.[2] A
bit of Google money isn't going to change the electoral calculus of the local
politicians that control that stuff.

The most likely scenario is Google convinces the government to sell/give them
land in Toronto's Port Lands at below market value, and they make a killing on
developing it with some technological window-dressing like free ad-supported
wi-fi which AFAIK is the only thing Sidewalk has launched to date.

[1] [http://brandondonnelly.com/post/152616141303/the-
yellowbelt](http://brandondonnelly.com/post/152616141303/the-yellowbelt) [2]
[http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/02/2016-census-mapping-
toro...](http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/02/2016-census-mapping-torontos-
population-growth)

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walshemj
And how would they control housing costs? Not going to stop speculators from
China and Russia desperately trying to move money out of their home countries
to stop the government getting its hands on it

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rory096
Build more housing.

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659087
I assume this high tech city will be covered in cameras, microphones, and
sensors of various types constantly reporting back to Alphabet (in order to
"improve your user experience")?

"Good morning, Steve. Our 'smart sidewalk' noticed that you've gained several
pounds and reduced the pace of your daily run over the past month" (insert
personal trainer ad)

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Animats
Singapore did that for their Jurong Lake District in 2015, according to Wired.
How did that work out?

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rubatuga
Again, watch house and rental prices soar through the roof... Can't a poor
student in Toronto get a break?

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sanswork
When that student wants property in the most prime space in the region
probably not. Toronto already allows tons of new units(like this project) what
more are you expecting from the city?

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wungsten
The problem is that U of T spans some of the best real estate in the city, and
obviously students want to live near there.

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sanswork
So the uni should relocate or build more extensive student housing? Not sure
how that is a problem for the city itself. Not everyone gets to live in prime
areas.

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wbl
If Toronto was building everywhere they would.

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sanswork
Toronto is building everywhere around there. That's why every conversation
about development in Toronto goes back and forth between 'too many condos!'
and 'too expensive housing'.

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lukasben
I don't have a source but I remember a panel discussion when Page came up with
the idea to build a floating city in international waters. This way they could
overcome the governmental regulations that slow down innovation, taxes etc. I
can't help but think about Toronto as a testing ground for that. Add facebooks
flying internet drones plus some space X space infrastructure. Sounds pretty
cool to me.

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matt4077
How do taxes slow down innovation–considering all R&D costs can be deducted,
and taxes only apply to profits?

And which regulations, specifically, are holding back innovation at Google?
Would their floating city allow me (to use one of your examples) to conduct
rocket launches in my backyard?

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lukasben
I'm not from the US and the discussion was mostly about regulations from the
states but what I got from it was: \- foreign skilled workforce is from their
perspective still to hard to employ (and the Muslim Ban could be an good
example for that) \- think about the massive amount of money that Apple has
offshore because it's to expensive to bring it back to the US! Put that
investment into R&D and the effect would be tremendous. \- I don't know how
high the cost for using the public infrastructure is in the US but building it
from ground up and managing it by yourself might be cheaper (I assume thats
what the Toronto project is all about). \- do some research on costs for
positions like "Governmental Relations Manager". google made some bad
experiences in China with that

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PaulHoule
It's Kansas City 2.0!

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Gravityloss
Is this because of tightening immigration in the US?

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easilyBored
_" Sidewalk Labs has discussed creating an entire micro-city or district that
could showcase the company’s ideas for urban planning...."_

all great, until Google decides to stop funding /working on the project.

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sanswork
Wouldn't almost all the cost be front loaded making their ongoing involvement
nice but not required?

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easilyBored
They can't just flip a switch and make it happen. If I were Toronto I'd make
them put a decent amount of money in an escrow account so the project is
finished no matter what.

But then this is Google's tech, so if they leave not sure how it works.

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sanswork
So your concern isn't the ongoing operation but that they start working with
waterfront TO on these 12 blocks and leave before their ideas are implemented?

Why would the city require more of them than any other developer? Any
development has a chance of falling before completion.

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easilyBored
I don't have a "concern," I merely stated what most people think of anything
Google. I don't know enough about this project (the article didn't either) and
I don't have a dog in this race. However, I do remember my grandma saying to
never put _any_ eggs in Google's baskets. She always said that she heard that
from her grandma.

Google will look after it's own interests, all the time. That's every quarter.

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sanswork
Every developer will look after their own interests every quarter.

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dannyr
Crazy. People on Hacker News are still upset at Google for shutting down
Reader.

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Animats
And their fiber-optic to the home ISP. That's quite relevant here.

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ReligiousFlames
Google Wi-Fi mesh network in Mountain View hasn't worked in a long time.
Toronto may well get similar service decline.

Also, Starbucks Google Wi-Fi rarely uses Google Fibre, IME, and instead uses
commercial providers like AT&T and Comcast. Plus, Starbucks hasn't deployed
much SGWF in Silicon Valley so it's still basically vaporware. (There's a
Starbucks in Santa Clara with non-Google Wi-Fi as slow as dial-up.) They'd be
wise to cancel the Google partnership and go with an outsourcer whom has
access to a couple of big providers to maximize cheapest/fastest/coverage and
handles all the deployment, support and security.

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sanswork
Toronto already has a city wide wi-fi that has never worked!

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rreichman
A bit sad that no US city was chosen for this project

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win_ini
Why?

