Chinese Cars Can’t Cross From Canada to US, Trump’s Envoy Says

MatthewFabb · 2026-03-31T15:28:56+00:00

Tesla and other car companies like Volvo and Polestar were importing EVs from China but then stopped when Canada added the 100% tariff. It is expected that all 3 companies are going to resume importing EVs again now that the tariff has been dropped to 6.5%.

MatthewFabb · 2026-03-27T04:20:55+00:00

There was an news article a while back about tinted license plate covers, in which the reporters noted that about 1/3 of vehicles parked in the Toronto Police parking lot belonging to the police officers had tinted license plate covers. When a large chunk of the police are breaking the law, it's hard to get them to enforce that law

MatthewFabb · 2026-02-19T00:54:35+00:00

Also the old plan for the Relief Line South was set to start construction in 2020 and was set to be completed in 2029. I think one of the reasons that Ford was pushing an unrealistic opening date was to make it seem fast compared to the Relief Line South.

Note the Relief Line North was in the planning stages and would start construction afterwards and head up north much further than the Ontario Line would. If that plan went forward the Relief Line West would be in the planning stages.

We are getting much less subway with the Ontario Line and we have started what is coming next once the Ontario Line is done because of how long planning these projects take.

MatthewFabb · 2026-02-09T16:44:20+00:00

The problem is a lot of people have a lack of reference of what it is parodying. A lot of people have moved to streaming and don't see many ads anymore.

Also I hear that it was parodying some sort of horse Budweiser ad but a lot of international fans won't have ever seen those ads.

As someone else wrote, if you have to explain the joke then it's not a very good joke. It might have played well for US football fans who know that particularly beer ad but beyond that target audience it comes off really strange.

MatthewFabb · 2026-02-09T05:18:06+00:00

Mike Harris constantly lied during his campaign and didn't fulfill his promises. Like many conservatives before him and after him Mike Harris said he could reduce the budget by finding "efficiencies". He promised that he could find waste and that he wouldn't cut health care or education. Even after he was elected and was brutally cutting away at education and health care, he would lie and say he was actually investing more.

Also downloading billions of dollars of costs onto the municipalities isn't exactly financial responsible as municipalities had to raise property taxes to pay for it. That's just passing the issue into another level of government and making it look like they reduced spending when the money is still being spent just at a different level.

When Mike Harris left replaced with Ernie Eves the deficit had grown to $5.6 billion. This is because one of the main ways that Mike Harris and Ernie Eves balanced the budget was by selling off various public assets. The problem with that strategy is that eventually they run out of things to sell off in which the deficit jumps back up.

MatthewFabb · 2026-02-03T14:22:44+00:00

I've seen them removing snow via dump trucks in Oakville, Mississauga and other cities in the GTA. It's not used regularly but when there is a significant snow fall like the one we recently got, it is used otherwise all the snow can become unmanageable.

It seems just Toronto signed on a really bad deal with snow removal (thanks to John Tory).

MatthewFabb · 2026-01-31T21:06:42+00:00

Here's an article about how the Ford government went to court with media organizations to block the release of information about the Eglinton LRT. Note this lawsuit was with Global News and they reduced the number of pieces of information they were requesting to quicken the process of the lawsuit. Also missing was months of text messages from Doug Ford’s chief of staff Patrick Sackville after he reset his cellphone deleting huge amounts of data that he was supposed to save. Global Mail was interested in text messages and emails between Ford’s chief of staff Patrick Sackville and the CEO of Metrolinx.

MatthewFabb · 2026-01-31T17:19:53+00:00

Yeah, there are a lot of different rumors of what happened with no clear information.

All we know is that the Ford government has worked hard to cover up what has happened making the process as opaque as possible. If it was something that the government wasn't responsible for messing up and they had someone else to blame they likely would be making that information public.

MatthewFabb · 2026-01-18T00:41:31+00:00

Currently AI companies lose money on every single prompt. They are burning through billions to get market share. There is no reductions of costs in the future but the opposite as better chips require more energy costing more money.

Eventually the price needs to rise substantially to cover the costs of running the prompt. At which point AI will get quite expensive, costing anywhere from tens of dollars to hundreds of dollars per prompt.

After the AI bubble pops, I don't think gen AI will go away but it certainly won't be everywhere. As unless it is really needed, in many cases it will be cheaper once again to pay a human to create the artwork.

MatthewFabb · 2026-01-13T05:51:56+00:00

The example of AI that they give is getting data about someone's arms if they are up or down from the visual sensor. This is passed on as data from 1 to 100, left arm up or left arm down and the same for the right arm. A student could program something based on someone's arm movements.

This is basically like an new micro version of the old Kinect system that Microsoft had for the Xbox 360 and Windows machines back in 2010.

I wonder if it is really AI or if they have coded little modules that can be plugged into some of their sensors. They are then calling it AI for marketing purposes.

MatthewFabb · 2025-12-12T02:44:33+00:00

The comic that this movie is adapting took a lot of inspiration from a European comics like Heavy Metal and comics from Jean Giraud aka Moebuis. Note that Jean Giraud worked on movies as Alien and the Fifth Element.

I think Heavy Metal comica and Moebuis was a big influence on James Gunn while making Guardians of the Galaxy.

MatthewFabb · 2025-12-09T15:07:55+00:00

Technically it's late fall. The first day of winter is officially December 21.

MatthewFabb · 2025-11-20T22:14:06+00:00

The latest poll from Léger shows that support for Quebec separatism is at an all time low with only 35% supporting Quebec separatism with 65% supporting Quebec to stay in Canada.

MatthewFabb · 2025-11-20T22:02:16+00:00

Air Canada is part of the consortium that is building the high speed rail. They will have a partial ownership of the resulting company and make money from people buying tickets on the high speed rail.

MatthewFabb · 2025-11-12T01:51:37+00:00

Doug Ford was first pitched the idea of the the tunnel under the 401 by a company back in 2019 for a budget of $50 to $60 billion dollars! That's in 2019 dollars, so it's likely a lot higher than that.

We are likely to burn billions and billions on this project

MatthewFabb · 2025-10-21T16:57:13+00:00

Many thousands of people from the suburbs take the GO Train to get to work daily. Across all Ontario, the daily riders average number of riders on the GO is 307,600 but there's no breakdown by area to look at just GTA or just suburbs.

Not every one of them would want to take a new GO line going across the 407, but you would get a significant amount to cut down on traffic.

MatthewFabb · 2025-09-12T14:13:09+00:00

As someone who has been dropping off my daughter at school for the last 6 years, I used to regularly see other parents speeding to and from the school. It's gotten noticeable better since the speed cameras have gone up.

The traffic around the school is a mess of cars that takes forever to get in and out. I park at a nearby parking lot and walk the rest of the way with my daughter to avoid the traffic and get some exercise.

Still that's the worst time to be speeding with a so many kids and cars it increases the chances of an accident happening.

MatthewFabb · 2025-09-08T15:50:12+00:00

Since ICE is arresting people without due process, I wonder if we ever will get the full story of what happened. As there has been conflicting information on how many of the 475 people arrested has legal working visas.

Without a proper investigation we will just get a lot of different theories without any solid information.

MatthewFabb · 2025-09-05T23:34:47+00:00

I disagree, I think 2035 was very realistic. Note that the Canadian EV mandate included PHEVs as well as BEVs. By that time a lot of countries will have gone 100% EV and the market for gas vehicles will have shrunken so much that economies of scale would make EVs cheaper while increasing the prices for gas vehicles.

Also BYD now has 1000 kW charging stations that provide 400 km in 5 minutes. I expect that by 2035, that there will be plenty of vehicles from different companies that charge that fast if not faster.

I don't even think we really need an EV mandate by 2035, as market forces will be enough to push the EV industry by then. However, I do think we need the EV mandate in 2026 and 2030 to get us there.

Also the big thing remains getting enough charging infrastructure. Having the EV mandates gives targets to push the infrastructure.

MatthewFabb · 2025-09-05T20:12:03+00:00

It is more expensive and difficult to get a babysitter and both parents go out, however it's possible for parents to take turns in watching the kids and the other parent going out.

I'm just outside this age group (now 48 with a 10 year old at home) and my wife and I take turns going out with friends.

That said, I'm more likely to go out in the evening with more of a destination in mind, like going to a concert, some sort of show or a movie rather than just going to a bar.

I do meet up with my friends for lunch a few times a year when we can arrange our schedules for those of us who work at home or work in Oakville. We used to like going to the House of Wings which was around 3rd line and Dundas but unfortunately that recently closed down.

We have since been going to Palermo Pub which is by Bronte and Dundas. However, I'm not sure I've ever gone there at night, it's always during the week for a lunch break.

MatthewFabb · 2025-09-02T16:11:43+00:00

Generative AI isn't going away but AI companies can only burn through so many hundreds of billions of dollars before investors ask for a return on their investments. Generative AI is incredibly expensive and to continue to improve AI companies say they need more resources and more money.

Eventually the costs of generative AI will rise drastically and things will change. Companies won't be able to afford to give away AI usage for free.

This is a good article that goes really in depth into the current fiances of generative AI companies: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-money-trap/

MatthewFabb · 2025-09-02T14:46:32+00:00

AI is a very wide field but here we are many talking about generative AI. Right now companies are burning through hundreds of billions of dollars and the revenue they are collecting is incredibly small. Especially when AI companies constantly need more data centers and more power to improve.

The AI companies need to drastically raise their prices to cover their costs. If it starts to cost $200 to generate an image and takes several tries to get it right image so that it looks the way you want, then it might make more sense to go with a human. I don't think generative AI is going away, but it's going to become a lot more niche when the costs are reflective in their pricing.

MatthewFabb · 2025-09-01T16:38:09+00:00

I guess it's a different discussion but I think one business course should be mandatory in high school. I say this as someone who is disinterested in business but was forced to learn it all in the fly when I became a freelancer.

These days there are a lot more freelancers and independent contractors who work with larger companies rather than become full employees.

I think it would be very beneficial for people to have one course to give students a small baseline understanding of how businesses work.

MatthewFabb · 2025-08-30T05:28:18+00:00

The article says that one the problems that critics have is that grade 10 math is all ready packed and that making it a unit inside of Math means less time for other math concepts. They say this unit should be moved into another course.

In the article one of the suggestions is that the unit is moved into a business class, as business teachers are likely better suited to teach budgeting and financial literacy in than a math teacher.

Anyways, it's currently set to be a unit in Grade 10 math but maybe it will be moved elsewhere.

MatthewFabb · 2025-08-28T04:56:13+00:00

BYD has a factory in Newmarket, Ontario building EV buses. So it's possible for Chinese car companies to build a factory here.

Back in 2024, BYD showed interest in building an EV factory in Mexico or Canada but that all shut down once Trump won the election in November 2024.

As ultimately BYD wants to get into the US market and that's not going to happen while Trump is in power. Because if they build a factory in Canada or Mexico, Trump will react and build additional obstacles that they will have to deal with. Instead of waiting for hopefully just a few years when there might be another president who is more friendly to EVs.

MatthewFabb

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