kbal

It never seemed like a lot but now that I pause to mentally add it all up it's probably at least $35.

I don't think so. But for anyone who didn't get the reference (idk if they still teach that in grade 10 history class) the relevant excerpt from the original speech can be found here. Imagine a world where politicians talk like that.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is the new Canadian experience. Its influence is felt in every city, every board room, every restaurant on Sparks Street. We must not fail to comprehend its glorious patriotic implications. We must never let the weight of our liberties and democratic processes endanger this huge industrial and military machinery of defence. It will shape the very structure of our society. In the councils of government we must strengthen the power and influence, overt and covert, of the military-industrial complex. So let's throw some money at it as quickly as possible.

If only more of today's rich people were classy enough to spend their time making life-size stone sculptures of dying elephants instead of whatever it is they do instead.

If there were such a thing as decarbonized oil, it would be hydrogen. Hydrogen is literally what you get if you (magically) remove the carbon from oil. If they mean something else by it, they're lying.

Why are there people old enough to be mothers who are unvaccinated? I thought it was just people whose brains were addled by the pandemic not vaccinating their kids.

We have Mod Organizer for that. Giant game retailers that want exclusive deals to distribute the hottest mods in order to force more people to sign up for accounts on their service can fuck right off. I'd be less inclined to complain if GOG Galaxy had a linux version.

Spicy autocomplete can do some awesome things, but comparing it to the invention of the printing press seems at best premature. Strong AI of the kind we always imagined is still n years away as it has been since the 1960s.

One danger of the current stuff is that people will anthropomorphize it, overestimate its abilities, and misapply it. The problem is not that it lacks creativity. Random rolls of the dice can also be useful as a creative tool. The problem that bothers me more is that the machines lack all taste, morality, and understanding while giving many people the false impression that they do have these things. From the Google users who mistakenly believe every AI-generated summary of search results to the venture capital firm that wastes a billion dollars on the premise that the machine is now infallible, it seems to have a tendency to lead us individually and collectively into absurd fantasy worlds as we project onto it our wildest dreams about meeting a superhuman intelligence.

Maybe progress will be rapid and it will all be different ten years from now, maybe not. What we have now is a small collection of new and potentially useful tools which seem capable of providing some more surprises here and there, good ones and bad, as we adapt to their existence — but not a miracle that will transform everything. It makes sense to criticise the more shallow of the arguments against it all and perhaps it can inform criticism of capitalism in new ways, but be careful not to buy into the hype too much.

Wait... do you guys not have a favourite rock?

I mean it's not just "unsettling" for lawyers. It's a law that clearly has no place in anything meant to resemble a democracy. It ought to be a major scandal that anyone thought it would be acceptable to even propose it.

It almost seems insulting that they didn't employ more subterfuge. Normally when the forces of evil want to advance the country towards totalitarianism they'll be clever about it, as with the previous government's C-63 which would've opened the door for a newly-created regulator to do some similar things specifically to social media. At least last year they thought it was worth the effort to try and look respectable and provide a rationale, a cover story for what they wanted to do.

This one it's just "we hereby grant ourselves the power to install a backdoor for the spies in every Internet service that's available in Canada." Don't worry, it'll be properly authorized spies only — with a few new additions to who gets authorized — and it'll be totally secure. It's like those videos on youtube that exist solely for the purpose of infringing someone's copyright and we're meant to assume that it's legally okay because the description says "no copyright infringement intended." It's the border security bill, no security or privacy risks intended.

There are plenty of other things in there that could more aptly be described as unsettling, where the implications aren't entirely clear to me such as with the money laundering stuff. If they scrap the completely nonsensical part the committee will still have its work cut out for it in evaluating the rest.

Any company that provides Canadians with a service that stores or transmits information ... can be told to install “any device, equipment or other thing."

There are no "safeguards" other than that the devices or systems so installed should not "introduce a systemic vulnerability." As we have all been repeatedly reminded by recent events one cannot arbitrarily add surveillance features to every Internet service without them coming with new attack surfaces that will inevitably introduce new vulnerabilities. That it will be unintentional when it happens is not such a great safeguard. There are many other problems with the bill, but that part in particular is so obviously egregious that I can't understand why there still isn't more reporting that explains or at least acknowledges just how crazy it is.

I thought he was more of a jester for the gammon class.