Xavier

Henceforth, the building code shall make mandatory that every room be perfectly grounded Faraday cages (/s).

Still, imagine lethal drones integrated with that technology (of course, they already have infrared, maybe even some adequate wavelength of X-rays).

Nevertheless, pretty cool to see how far we can take preexisting technology with the help of some deep learning layers.

Unfortunately, the solutions are fairly easy but it would be political suicide for anyone who would even dare to actually propose anything that would ruffle the feathers of the vested interests, the powerful or (God forbid /s) the wealthiest 10%, or the "untouchable" 0.1%.

On one side Simplify/Regularize the tax code by eliminating all ambiguity :

• by removing exceptions and loopholes for corporation and individuals (it only helps the wealthy with "top gun" accountants to "legally" avoid/reduce taxes).

• pre-filled tax declaration should be expanded or made automatic for every individuals with simple tax situations (they should not be worrying about taxes and tax credits when their income in lower than a inflation indexed preset treshold)

• make everyone's tax information public or accessible for every citizens similar to Tax transparency in Finland (PDF) it helps prevent/detect/reduce social inequalities and keep every one accountable toward each others

• exclude tax filling softwares and companies whom have vested interest in making tax declarations as complex and as unintelligible as possible by lobbying government

• increase the progressive taxe rate for higher income brackets, add new higher brackets (over 60%) for yearly income over a million, over tens of millions, over hundreds of millions, etc…

• eliminate Religious Tax Exemptions as they have been [abused and misappropriated more often without any real public oversight] (https://centreforinquiry.ca/religious-institutions-and-your-tax-dollars/)

• increase financing and auditing of Canada Revenue Agency to help better pursue, prosecute and recover wealth hidden in tax Havens, or create a new separate branch of the CRA tasked exclusively to handle corporate tax shenanigans/evasion and deep pocketed individuals

On the other side, beyond the well meaning but hastily half-baked (I am unqualified to properly evaluate such plan) Canada’s Housing Action Plan, we should create a long term Strategic Urbanization and Cooperative Housing Fund somewhat akin to the Strategic Innovation Fund whereas :

• local-first sustainability, durability, climate change mitigation/adaptation and energy efficiency are prioritized and audited/inspected for renovations and all new future developments

• refrain housing from switching owners too frequently (control exaggerated speculation) or make public a historical record of all inspections reports, renovations, purchase price, owners and in case of an auction make the bidding process, name and amount of bidder transparent to all participants (better overall)

• limit to let's say 3 to 6 (anything beyond 10 becomes onerous) the numbers of residential building/house/condominium/apartment complex/senior housing/long-term care home a corporation, partnership or a individual can own/manage. 67000 homes owned and managed by a single entity is far beyond reasonable.

• favor and help fund Mass Timber projects instead of concrete construction, by using prefab Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL) for multistory residential habitation. By increasing Mass Timber adoption we help sequester more and more carbon into inert materials (although technically still combustible on the outermost layer).

• prioritize housing co-ops projects that aim to offer affordable housing similar to namely in British-Colombia or in Québec - Interloge (PDF)

• (not a immediate priority, but crucial for the future of Canada) help set up a publicly accessible, interoperable, provincially and municipally controlled and constantly evolving : 5 years/10 years/25 years/50 years/100 years/200 years development roadmaps of natural, public, private and industrial lands/sectors/infrastructures/housing. Doing so will ensure everyone is on the same page with what is happening and what are proposed to happen in their neighborhood within their and their childrens lifetime. Everyone, from scientists to farmers, from residents to international students, from local business owners to local homeless, should be able to submit justified concerns/updates/changes/refusals to any future proposals/projects. Likewise, project proponents should be able to convince, demonstrate, allay, include, update, justifiably dismiss or preallocate equitable compensation publicly. By the time the yearly roadmap is on its way, anything without consensus or majority approval should be reported into the future or rejected, thus no surprise should remain (excepting a archeological/historical discovery or unforeseen dangers/accidents during excavation/construction/renovation).

Well that became more of a long winded exasperation on my part...

But thank you for reading my probably pointless TedTalk®©™ 🤣

Sorry to burst your little bubble but the UN charter specifically states it is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and serve as a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations.

As much as some may want to believe the UN is some sort of «Global Supreme Court», it is not. It mainly functions by consensus of all other nation (including those who explicitly chooses to abstain). Therefore, by making the UN somehow responsible for the “backend”, as you have said, or as the custodian of the entire repository/library of videos uploaded to YouTube, every member nations would then have their own priorities on what to "keep" and what to "remove" from the repository/library. Since the UN works principaly by consensus only a very small subset of all the videos will be kept as being universally non-controversial. Hence, the majority of videos will be irrecoverably erased.

Perhaps you meant a NGO (non-governmental organization) or a non-profit organization such as the Internet Archive. However, storage and maintenance for such a vast collection of large media (videos) is non-trivial and expensive that very few non-profit could administer.

Alternatively, with a fediverse-like protocol, everyone will be responsible to host their own videos and also videos they consider important/valuable to archive and/or help distribute. Thus, no single point of control and no need to "nationalize" YouTube. Of course it is hard and complex, nevertheless it is only the first step toward a more resilient and a more equitable video sharing/distribution infrastructure.

Like most others have stated here, I'll also add my recommendations for Linux Mint.

I have helped most of my family, relatives and several friends move and familiarize themselves with Linux Mint, especially those that do almost everything within the web browser (shopping/email/Facebook/youtube/travel reservation/etc…). Since I already was their goto tech support, I showed them around on Linux Mint and they pretty easily got going as everything was intuitively similar to Windows. All was point and click (after my initial setup with their network, peripherals, printer and some basic automatic updates configuration), no terminal voodoo magic for them.

For the younger ones I typically set them up with Pop!OS and Steam and they are ready to jump without me having to explain much. Sometimes, I had to install and help setup a server (Minecraft) so they can play with their friends.

Personally, I use a mix of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), Alpine Linux, TrueNAS Scale, OPNsense and VMware ESXi/Workstation/vSphere for virtual machines.

Mind you, I would not recommend VMware as I am currently evaluating my transition options toward XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra or LXD/Incus or something else entirely.

I would welcome US and other countries to purchase drug made in canada. Whiles drugs imported by Canada should be restricted or some kind of reexportation fee should be levied to avoid shortages.

There are several manufacturer based in Canada such as Apotex Inc., Johnson&Johnson/Actelion, AbbVie, Novartis, Merck/Cubist, Pfizer/Hospira, Bayer, Roche, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, etc… Statistics from 2020

I would love to see Canada become a major influence in making high quality generic drugs more afordable to every one on the planet.

I wonder if games that require such farfetched amounts of money should be included in the Luxury tax?

A lot of those "whales" have cognitive difficulties and/or gambling addictions issues. Since many if these game developers/publishers have no qualm blindly milking and profiteering. It should be no surprise if some sort of tax is levied to help societies (à-la-tobacco or sugar tax) attenuate the ravages of gambling addictions.

Moreover, Star Citizen has been released over 10 years ago while been continually updated.

At what point is it just senseless greed that has taken over the game?

I regularly "deep freeze" or make read-only systems from Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu, Linux Mint LMDE and others Linux Distros whereas I disable automatic updates everywhere (except for some obvious config/network/hardware/subsystem changes I control separately).

I have had systems running 24/7 (no internet, WiFi) for 2-3 years before I got around to update/upgrade them. Almost never had an issue. I always expected some serious issues but the Linux package management and upgrade system is surprisingly robust. Obviously, I don't install new software on a old system before updating/upgrading (learned that early on empirically).

Automatic updates are generally beneficial and helps avoid future compatibility/dependency issues on active systems with frequent user interaction.

However, on embedded/single purpose/long distance/dedicated or ephemeral application, (unsupervised) automatic updates may break how the custom/main software may interact with the platform. Causing irreversible issues with the purpose it was built for or negatively impact other parts of closed circuit systems (for example: longitudinal environmental monitoring, fauna and flora observation studies, climate monitoring stations, etc.)

Generally, any kind of update imply some level of supervision and testing, otherwise things could break silently without anyone noticing. Until a critical situation arises and everything break loose and it is too late/too demanding/too costly to try to fix or recover within a impossibly short window of time.

I attempted to try Garuda Linux (cinnamon) on a mini PC (Ryzen 5800H based APU), but graphic artefacting was a constant issue as soon as the install started.

After several tries I had to abandon ship and wait till a new release to maybe try again, if I remember. Not exactly "Nope, this one's not for me" as I had yet to properly try it.

Otherwise, I tried Crunchbangplusplus and just gave up for being a bit too minimalist or not yet ready for prime time as I kept geting issues after issues and did not have the patience to wrangle the whole OS for everything from getting network working to audio and screen issues on my system.

Anyways, it is always fun to try new systems/apps/protocols and see where thing are headed towards.

Hence, my alternative plan: I suggest planting trees and gardening fruits, vegetables and leguminous plant.

Will it solve anything regarding those conflicts? I don't know.

But as you have said, any plan is better.

With all the interest in 3D printer and large communities building their own printers, where are the amateur 2D printers? Did we just jump to 3D printing because it was cooler (which I also admit is amaizing)?

I just want a basic 2D inkjet or laser printer that doesn't stop printing because magenta is low or doesn't waste ink to “clean” the print head, nor make up weird errors because it doesn't have access to the internet.

What about printers without ink? Would it be too hard/complicated to use a lower power laser (instead of a laser cutter) to burn/scorch a thin micrometric, if not nanometric, layer of normal everyday printing/copy white paper?

As a child, I remember scorching magazine/journal paper and all sorts of wood materials with my grandmother's handheld magnifying lens under the summer sun in the yard. I was able to draw stuff without burning some of the material completely.

Copyright should have stayed the original initial 14 years with possible renewal to 28 years. But like in France back then, also include the original authors (last one alive, if several) lifespan. Hence, a copyright would last either the authors lifespans or 28 years, whichever is longer.

Moreover, the patent system is being abused and does not serve the original goal of "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement there on not before known or used." It granted the applicant the "sole and exclusive right and liberty of making, constructing, using and vending to others to be used" of his invention.. It needs major changes, including the requirement to have the "invention" be under examination by reputable third-party laboratories (such as Intertek, SGI, Underwriters Laboratories, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technischer Überwachungsverein, SGS - Société Générale de Surveillance, etc…) before being granted a patent. Nowadays, patents are given almost willy-nilly to anyone no matter how vague or obvious the supposed invention.

Nowadays, patents are being misused in Patent Ambush mechanisms and scenarios, meanwhile Patent Trolls and Hoarders whole existence is are to impede/obstruct legally and impose exorbitant levies/fees onto organization and companies actually innovating and developing useful art/process/devices. Even more incredible, there are Submarine Patents being hidden away to suddenly take hostage existing products and process of various companies by imposing extortionate royalties.