Given the rapidly declining state of individual privacy, when discussing these extensions it helps to be specific about the authorized agency and context. For example, these days, it's pretty much a given that NSA-type spy agencies are already getting all of whatever electronic communications they want with little friction. In the US there are certain supposed safeguards against surveilling US citizens domestically but we've already seen how quickly and easily these have been circumvented by using partner 'five eyes' agencies and commercial data brokers.
While this is obviously problematic, to me, it's even worse if domestic law enforcement agencies gain new ways to remove friction like warrant requirements or at least the need to make specific per-instance requests (which are possible to (in theory) be tracked and reviewed to detect over-use and abuse). The idea of domestic law enforcement agencies gaining access to "full take" feeds of everything enabling them to retrospectively build massive connection trees of metadata which can be searched is downright terrifying.
Good insight. The difference between the NSA and local cops is that the NSA won't be looking for some bullshit to use as an excuse to arrest or harass you.
And journalists, and people that see something and may want to wristleblow, and people that know commercial secrets (yes, they've been caught doing commercial spying). There are more categories here.
And, of course, there's always the danger that the one random person that you didn't see eye to eye earlier just happens to work there.
they dragnet surveil to build an increasingly accurate stockpile of data on an increasing number of people. everything is catalogued and filed away, nothing is discarded. at some point in the past or future, this data has been/will be weaponized via ML and used in the best interest of whomever controls it (the government), not in the best interest of the surveilled masses. this is why it is important to care about your privacy on the internet.
While your presentation is probably getting you downvoted, this is the real problem. They use this information to control/influence government officials or people with power.
Unless you’re a journalist publishing information about the federal government that they don’t like. Then they’ll imprison you indefinitely without trial.
The bar is higher for them to wield “some bullshit” against you, but rest assured, they still will.
It’s been more than a decade since Assange has been free.
Furthermore, Canada doesn't have a (real) constitution since the TP they have since 1982 has a "not withstanding" clause, meaning parliament can just ignore their equivalent of the Bill of Rights
I know you know this, because you mentioned the Bill of Rights, but just to be more precise, we have a constitution, but our charter of rights is overridable in certain circumstances. The constitution is more than an enumeration of rights in both the US and Canada, it also defines the structure of representation, government, and democracy, none of which is subject to the notwithstanding clause (obviously, because the notwithstanding clause itself is part of the Constitution).
Of course. The clause doesn't cover how the country is divided into provinces, for example.
The clause covers, with no real check on power (see Quebec vs high court), the most important part of the constitution - the government's relationship with its people!
Canada does have The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but even basic things like property rights or self defence are not even mentioned there, and those that are, described vaguely, so it renders the whole charter not worth the ink that it's printed with.
Note that the notwithstanding clause has never been used by the federal government (the "parliament" you referenced).
It's a shitty clause, and should be removed but it was put in at the behest of certain province(s) as the only way to get the Charter of Rights and Freedoms at all, and has only been used by provincial governments (aka legislatures, though a few provinces do call them "provincial Parliament").
That said, the Conservative Leader has signalled that he will use it to override the Supreme Court on social issues. Now dropping hints in an election runup is obviously different than actually invoking the NWC, but it demonstrates that our Charter is as robust as our politicians' perceived risk of throwing it out. Having the loophole to preserve some level of provincial autonomy is one thing, but having federal parties signal they will use it is an attack on the institution itself.
1. There is effectively one ruling party in Canada (the Liberals) representing the interest of the Eastern industrialists (the Laurentian elite). The supreme court is appointed from this incestuous group and the government typically wins (exception - truckers)
2. They have the War Measures act which the feds have proven very willing to use.
3. Canadians are extremely conforming. Really they are Scandinavians in their attitude.
Before the last 9 years of the Liberals there was 9 years of the Conservatives. Prior to that there were 12 years of Liberals and before that 10 years of Conservatives. Saying there is one ruling party in Canada ignores the majority of Canadian history. Furthermore, since you brought up partisanship, it's worth noting that outside of Quebec, only members of conservative provincial parties have invoked the notwithstanding clause.
The majority of Canadian history? The Liberals have ruled for 70 years in the 20th century, and 15 of the last 24 of the 21st.
Also the beloved and so mourned recently deceased Brian Mulroney, a Conservative, came from.... the same incestuous Laurentian Elite from the YYZ-MTL corridor that all of the PMs except Harper (whom I dislike, but I digress) have hailed from.
In fact, Im old enough to remember Mulroney's government collapsing because of corruption surrounding the same companies, the same industrialists, that discredited Chretien's (whom I liked, for what it's worth), and would have take down Jr's were it not for him firing the justice minister.
As to the not withstanding clause, you're really clinging on to "only separatists and conservatives have used it" without addressing all the reasons the Federal government doesn't need to ever invoke it (power is concentrated in the PM hands in a way unparalleled in the West)?
Look, I've read Trudeau's autobiography. His "memoirs" as he called it. I recall vividly his lament that a flawed constitution is better than none. Flawed? It fails at its most basic task - limiting government power.
> beloved and so mourned recently deceased Brian Mulroney
You made me laugh here (and I don't even know if you're being sarcastic or not! :-) )
> YYZ-MTL corridor that all of the PMs except Harper (whom I dislike, but I digress) have hailed from
Joe Clark was from Alberta and Kim Campbell was from BC, though their stints as PM were too short to matter I guess. Diefenbaker was born in Ontario, but spent his childhood in and his electoral seats were from Saskatchewan. Robert Borden was from and represented Halifax.
I'm not disputing the presence of the "Laurentian Elite" or its (ill, IMO) influence, but proportionally to population the PMs haven't really been all that off regionally, especially as the population west of Ontario has only really grown in the last 30 years, especially in Alberta and BC.
>power is concentrated in the PM hands in a way unparalleled in the West
The UK would like a word. They've been lamenting the "presidentialisation" of the PM there since Thatcher took power.
The UK ruling party has much more effective control over their PM-> see how many times they ditched their PM since the last election. Otherwise, yes, the UK PM is a (semi) elected autocrat.
Political blowback has been enough to keep the power in check - it significantly raises the visibility of the attempted action whenever it's invoked(1) and historically has been associated with a political hit. It also has a 5-year sunset/renewal requirement, and can only override certain sections.
I think everyone would generally agree a constitution would be stronger without it, but even if 'it's only a matter of time', it's played out as a pretty decent compromise to actually get the charter signed ~45 years earlier than potentially no charter at all.
Canada generally relies on trust and good behaviour more than the US system of checks-and-balances - the most obvious difference is that our Prime Minister plays the role of both US president (head of exec) and congress (technically just the House equivalent, but the senate equivalent is much weaker)
Note that this comment once again diverges from the truth. The war measures act has only been used once in the last 60 years (1970 October Crisis), and was repealed in 1988. You might have (intentionally or unintentionally) confused it with the Emergencies Act, which was used in 2022. It's much more limited, specifically requires governmental action to be in line with the charter, and requires review by parliamentary committee and a public inquiry following any usage.
What? There has been absolutely no blowback when Quebec used it. And minimal blowback for all other uses. This is just a weird cope, people don't really care if they use it here. It's sad but true.
I agree but that's not super actionable. There's no actual consequences. In fact, I don't think said usage has ever been even slightly important in any election for any of the government that has used it.
And since that's usually the main defense for the notwithstanding clause ("using it would lead to too much backlash so self policing is fine!"), then i don't see how it's defensible.
Not that it actually even makes sense anyways. If it won't be used, why have it? If it will be used for issues as trivial as what it has actually been used for up until now, that's super dangerous, so again why even leave it there? And for exceptional situations, we already have a government that's pretty trigger happy with the emergency act that allows for basically anything.
So it leaves us with provincial government using it in non critical situations (which would be handled by the federal government anyways). I guess that's also a "valid" option, and the one we have now, but then it's hard to argue that our constitution isn't completely worthless.
Don't think I agree with your reasoning. I'm also guessing you're from Quebec in your attempt to minimize how cavalierly the CAQ has used this law in recent times to advance it's agenda.
I suspect we will start to see Alberta's provincial government use it more frequently, starting with small items eventually leading up to challenging the equalization act. Saskatchewan may follow suit. This law is likely to become the centerpiece of Canadian politics over the next five years.
Wait what? Where did you get that from? I'm against the clause, why would I minimize Quebec using it? That's the opposite of what I'm trying to do. That we even have such a mechanism in Canada is super bad imo. Quebec hasn't been the only province using it but that's besides the point. The RoC didn't do anything about Quebec misusing it, because they can't do anything about it. Sure there's some outrage but again, what does that do to stop the laws that were passed using that "no constitution lol" card? Absolutely 0.
And if you think I'm in favor of the CAQ out of all things then there's again been a severe misunderstanding. I can't think of any politician that's as low and repulsive as Legault in Canada.
My apologies, that didn't come out clearly in your previous response. Sure, you're right of course, it's not just Quebec, but it's been mostly Quebec [1]. Once we normalize it's use though, it will start to get weaponized for partisan reasons.
Yes, yes we all know the history. "We didnt want it! We dont want it! We've never used it" As if 42 years are a long time.
Of course, the feds dont really need the clause. In less than 60 years they've invoked the war measures act twice. The last time the government lost the court case on its suitability.
Canada has always been the land of the free to conform.
While it may be true that the Federal government has not used Section 33, they do readily invoke Section 1. As an easy example, roadside check stops for alcohol screening. This is a violation of section 8 (unreasonable search and seizure) and section 9 (arbitrary detention) but the SCC has determined that they’re saved by section 1 (reasonable in a free and democratic society).
During COVID 6.2 was violated repeatedly (pursue gaining livelihood in any province) when people were not allowed to cross the border between provinces. I don’t know if that ever made it to the SCC but I’m sure it would be saved by section 1 as well.
Note that the two examples you give are generally by provincial authorities as well, not the federal government.
I strongly support section 1, and think both of those examples make our society function better, and agree that they are reasonable in our free and democratic society.
Usually the difference is where the interception occurs.
For instance, most countries have had the ability to intercept signals since there have been signals.
What they want is to root the OS / Application, and transmit home the unencrypted contents of messages before encryption or after decryption.
They cant just walk into a business and order that however, they need the power to compel businesses to implement these changes. Thats why these things end up super vague.
Can you have true E2E encryption without knowing your peer's public key in advance?
They could cheat by sending you to talk to someone else in a "private" manner.
An offline attack against the host's keys that relies on undisclosed vulnerabilities, or an online one against their infra that abuses recent CVEs and bad security also seem possible.
Wouldn't this involve breaking the trust chain? You can't just redirect HTTPS traffic to a separate host with a different key. If the government demanded the peer's private key then this is possible. But you can't just arbitrarily redirect traffic without resulting in a cert error.
I was going to add the same thing, this isn't only something the telecom providers do, the equipment providers include lawful intercept features as part of the equipment, the telecom just has to setup access. I don't have a chance to check right now, but I think this is even part of the published standards.
Ireland are a complete outlier, as the government incentivised itself not to deliver on housing as a result of IMF/Troika bullying. It set up National Asset Management Agency in 2009 to clean the property crash related debts from the balance sheets of the main Irish banks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Asset_Management_Agen...
As per the usual government mouthpieces, it was a roaring success -
"NAMA's overall contribution of €10.5 billion to the State, comprising its projected surplus €4.9 billion and recoupment of the €5.6 billion of state aid it paid to the participating institutions, represents a significant outperformance relative to expectations at inception in late 2009"
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0306/1436280-nama-ibrc...
Sadly it has resulted in arguably the worst housing crisis in the EU. 68 per cent of people aged between 25-29 in Ireland still live at home. This figure is nearly 26 per cent higher than the EU average of 42.1.
NAMA is not in any way responsible for the housing crisis. Its purpose was not ever to fund or incentivize homebuilding and in any case, if I think back a decade, to a point where NAMA had been in operation for five years, there was no housing crisis. Neither NAMA nor the Troika ever discouraged housebuilding. Even if it had been a policy of theirs, there wouldn't have been any need: a sizeable proportion of the building companies here went bust after the 2008 crash and their employees had to emigrate or retrain. Furthermore, none of the local banks were in the financial position (or the mood) to fund property development.
The Irish housing crisis has very simply and abruptly come about because of the massive growth in population that has occurred here over the last nine or ten years. Due to the catastrophic implosion that occurred in the indigenous building industry after 2008, speedily ramping homebuilding up to a level that can keep pace with inward migration is essentially impossible.
We may eventually be able to build fifty thousand dwellings a year, but the shortages will persist until then. There are other factors that exacerbate the problem, most notably our sclerotic planning system, but the fundamental issue is the hollowing out of the private construction sector that occurred at the start of the last decade.
I never claimed its aim was to fund or incentivize housebuilding - in fact not only was NAMA emblematic of the overall government policy to restrict supply in order to re-bolster its portfolio of residential housing in deep negative-equity, it also played a significant role in worsening the housing crisis through its sale of assets to real estate investment trusts (REITs).
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/housing-crisis-why-nama-s...
Dr Rory Hearne's research from Maynooth sums it up brilliantly
"The housing crisis has also been caused by wider government policy from 2010 to encourage the entry of global investors and vulture funds (via various tax incentives, lobbying and fire sale of assets) into Ireland in order to offload toxic loans from NAMA and the banks. Rising house prices and rents post 2013 were also viewed positively and were promoted as an enticement to investors, while rising prices and rents were also viewed positively for rehabilitating the balance sheets of the banks, a core aim of all policy post 2008. The impact on the housing system was not considered an issue, despite myself and others highlighting the potential problems.
We can see now that these policies have contributed directly to the crisis with vulture funds hoarding land purchased from NAMA. Vulture funds are more likely to repossess houses in mortgage arrears and raise rents on buy to let properties (for example, Ireland's biggest landlord Ires Reit has raised rents substantially). The increase in investors purchasing homes means they are competing with potential home owners. We need to cool off this speculative inflow of investors into our housing system (investors bought up to a fifth of all homes in 2017) and extend the vacant sites tax to derelict property and increase it further to force either sale or development."
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/research/spotlight-researc...
About a week ago there were significant routing issues between east Africa and Europe. Latency ballooned, and jitter was quite significant too - especially over thr course of the day. I believe both EASSY and one of the semewe circuits were down. I had packets from the U.K. reaching Mozambique via Tokyo.
That was a temporary situation though, and I think the worst I’ve seen in east Africa from the last 10 years.
The argument was “Most routers do not put ping-processing in the "fast path". That is, instead of having the ping be processed by an ASIC, the ping gets processed by the router's CPU.”
That’s meaningless. Control planes are often policed sure, but on overload will simply drop. In my experience they drop icmp to expired before echo response but most will generate ttl expired just fine.
Any router capable of processing a full bgp table, and to be honest any router made in the last 20 years, is perfectly capable of responding to icmp echos.
There was then a second argument that “3rd world” routers aren’t as good as ones in western country. In the majority of cases they’re exactly the same. That western arrogance is somewhere between insulting and amusing.
The final argument is about path loss/jitter/etc, specially loss on the first hop (your “my crappy 3G provider” argument)
That’s exactly what this test of starlink is showing.
Starlink is a great tool in specific cases, but the fanboyish ness often drowns out the actual benefits.
I can't think of a SPAC, regardless of nationality, that actually succeeded other than Cellebrite. SPACs in their current usage are basically vehicles to circumvent securities fraud and generate wild amounts of money based on hyperbolic slide-decks via PIPE and NAV offerings pre-DA - the amount of EV and Quadcopter plays that were obvious vaporware getting traction in 2020-2022 was insanity.
I've been tracking SPACs as a curiosity. The only ones on my list that are above the $10 starting price are DraftKings, Hims & Hers Health, and Grindr.
In other words: gambling, erection medication, and gay hookups.
Lynk Global are merging with SLAM this year to list publicly which is the only other one I'd watch out for - decent business model, first to debut the satellite to unmodified phone tech in a commercial fashion. GENI will probably recover as well.
Lynk Global will competing against Starlink — which is already manufacturing and operating at scale, and is vertically integrated with their launch provider... which will soon be lofting _much_ larger and more capable satellites on their new launcher. I don't see what worthwhile niche will be left for Lynk to play with.
The cynic in me can't help but wonder if somebody is hoping to cash out via whatever investors haven't yet noticed the writing on the wall.
I think the lesson in the past couple of years of SPACs is that all the companies that sounded obviously important and useful turned out to be massively overvalued and built on sandcastles of hopes and dreams. Lynk does sound like one of those.
And what those few companies that were actually successful — the “gambling, erection medicine, gay hookups” of my previous post — have in common is that they operate businesses that might have some trouble raising money through the gatekeepers of a traditional IPO.
(Logical conclusion: if I ever invest in a SPAC, it’s got to be a drug-dealing furry porn site for crypto traders at minimum.)
They have an actual commercial direct to device service launched, demonstrable, and scalable. I'd also look into the architecture of Starlink versus bent-pipe and other designed-for-purpose system, rather than the retrofit we get from Starlink.
This in contrast with their SPAC competitor AST SpaceMobile, who AT&T just announced their strategic partnership with for Commercial service up to 2030 yesterday and spiked their stock 40% in premarket... to still be about $6.50 off the NAV lol
So yeah, I think the analysts and Engineers are hedging their bets. Starlink has launch capacity but that's about their edge as the incumbent at the moment. The rest have LEO satellites up and are ramping up constellations as we speak.
The British viewed the Irish through Malthusian theory, whose moral and cultural failings they attributed to the cause of the famine. They effectively blamed the Irish peasantry for having too many children while living in a state of poverty, which they viewed as irresponsible. Despite this being as a direct result of their occupation and sectarianism.
The monoculture of potato was solely due to the tenant system imposed on Irish subsistence farmers by the British ruling classes. Ireland remained a net exporter of food during the famine. The supposed 'charity' mainly took the form of workhouses - which were effectively Hospices
One incredible exception was the Choctaw Nation who, fresh off the trail of tears, were so moved by the plight of the Irish peasant that on March 23, 1847, they donated $170 for Irish Famine relief. This was at the height of “Black 47,” when close to a million Irish were starving to death.
To put it simply, Malthus' theory states that famine is caused by overpopulation. Thus the British, by their own basis of justification, deliberately reduced the Irish population. The people targeted were deprived of culture, security, health, and life. They were targeted for reasons of ethnic and cultural intolerance. Ergo constituting Genocide.
The alternative? The aforementioned Workhouses or the aptly named 'Coffin Ships'
Most of the USP, outside of the ecosystem developed around the single platform, is to do with form and power draw. Adding in the GPU/adapter/PSU to leverage cheap CUDA cores probably works out worse power/price/form wise than going for a better SoC or x86 NUC solution.
This is standard pricing in Western Europe, if not a little higher. I'm at about €150 a month with everything covered bar Vision and Dental in Ireland, employer provided. Total medication bill per month is capped at €80 as well as part of our National Health Service, regardless of what you're prescribed.
I'm German and I pay wayyyy more than 150€, that's why I'm asking. I'd say it's more like 1000-1500€ bucks, depending on how much you make.
/edit: I checked my pay slip and I pay around 1600€ per month for regular health care (Techniker Krankenkasse). Are we discussing different things here? I'm confused
/edit2: In general it's at least 14,6% of your gross income, for me 15.8%.
Not only that, but they're frequently the top position in the year-end 'best of' on both the legitimate consumer review sites and the more credible outlets
I don’t think they have anything that solves the non-standard time zone problem.
At $500, it’s moving into a market segment where I’m going to care if something happens to it. I want to be carefree on vacation.
In this particular case, the Casio is unapologetically quartz. I don’t think I’m settling here, and it’s not a cheap watch pretending to be a more expensive watch. It’s a cheap beater watch that also happens to have a world time function. With an analog watch, I’d feel like I was settling for quartz… unless it’s a Spring Drive or F.P. Journe.
At home I have some nice automatics that I general wear. For these, I prefer a very simple aesthetic, a no-date dial is ideal. Citizen tends to have very busy designs.
They receive a signal from an atomic clock on a regular basis to sync up and avoid drift. Between those signal, they use a quartz movement to keep time.
What Canada seems to actually want is a way of doing this without legal oversight or recourse to traditional legal gatekeeping like warrants.
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