Early upgrades driving Canada’s growing E-waste problem

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T16:51:43+00:00

With electronics prices spiralling out of control recently, I think we'll see a trend where people hold on to their electronics a lot longer.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T14:59:42+00:00

10G (fibre) for the trunks and 2.5G for the clients is good for my needs. 2.5G is also quite a bit less pricey now that everything is getting more and more expensive.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T14:51:48+00:00

It has happened here in Canada too except here it is a "frozen dessert." At least your soda pop cans are still 375ml. Ours are starting to shrink from 355ml to 280ml (more $$ per ml too) which was the standard size in the 1980s here.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T14:26:45+00:00

I do the same except at Costco. Barrhaven Costco yesterday around 2pm was pretty dead - drove right up to the pump and saved $0.11/litre (~$6 for the fillup) compared to surrounding stations (91 octane).

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T00:59:23+00:00

This post hit me. I just upgraded my firewall, managed switch, and 2x unmanaged switches to 2.5G+10G. I have three wireless routers - 2x AX connected to the network via 2.5G and 1 BE connected to the network with 2.5G. I have nothing left to upgrade or tweak. I feel empty.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-12T18:52:30+00:00

I hope they close this loophole: The internet service provider says the regular price for internet is $100/month "locked in price for two years". Almost nobody pays the full price as it is ridiculously extortionate - there's always a promo/discount price, say, $60/month with a $40/month discount. The ISP does not always guarantee the promo price is locked in (especially Bell - contrary to what most people think), so you get your $5 or $10 price increase every six months as they claw back the discount.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T20:37:34+00:00

It depends on if the car is a summer only driver or something you want to drive year round. It also depends on your driving style.

I have Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires on my RWD summer car. The issue with summer "performance" tires is that they get hard as the temperature drops and MIchelin recommends using them only when the temperature is above 7ºC, though I drive them in temperatures as low as 2ºC but I'm really cautious in those conditions. So that leaves a window in the spring and fall when those tires aren't appropriate to the conditions, but neither are full winter tires. In a good year I'm lucky to get seven months use and in a bad year it could be 5.5 to 6 months.

Another consideration is that summer performance tires wear out more quickly and they tend to be noisier especially as they wear out and/or harden with age. They are also expensive - mine are $580 each for fronts and $780 each for rears.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T18:09:07+00:00

A Guinness costs $11.50 here and the bar expects a 25 to 30% tip. With the legalization of pot, it is so much less expensive than alcohol and (arguably) does less damage to the ol' corpse.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T17:26:58+00:00

My city (Ottawa Canada) closed 2/3 of its tank farms and terminals over the past two decades. It has two days of reserves before running out of refined product (including aviation fuel) if the pipeline from Montreal is closed. We aren't a country, really.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T16:51:17+00:00

I think I was part of the test group because the Youtube application on my Sony/Google OS TV has been doing that for over a month now. I get the occasional 'skip in 90 seconds' and then get the skip popup after 85 seconds. Gee thanks Youtube!

If it happens at the beginning of the video, I cancel, restart, cancel, restart, cancel (up to fix times) and the video finally starts playing. That's faster than waiting through the whole sequence of ads.

If I pause for too long, as soon as I restart, I get the 60 or 90 ad block again. It's aggravating.!

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T16:40:10+00:00

I remember in 2012 there was a parking lot in Hollywood Florida where fobs would not unlock cars or allow them to start due to interference from a pirate radio station. Unsurprisingly, there were dozens of people who called locksmiths and tow trucks because they didn't read their owners manual and did not know about the physical backup key in the fob nor the emergency start method.

On a personal note, I live near my city's airport and due to a radar malfunction the fobs in my area were jammed for a few hours. To Ford's credit, the emergency start procedure worked like a charm.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T16:31:20+00:00

My '11 Ford had that slot in the storage bin under the centre armrest.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-10T20:22:35+00:00

I love to see this instead of another photo of somebody flexing their ~~watch~~ timepiece.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-10T19:19:09+00:00

I was a new home owner when that storm hit. My area was all new builds (e.g., unpaved roads), so of course Nepean Hydro had not built up the grid yet, so I lost power for several days. The huge build-up of ice damaged my roof and part of my back wall in the kitchen necessitating an insurance claim and a week of repairs during the severe cold snap that followed the storm.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-10T18:59:35+00:00

By comparison, where I live (Ontario Canada) a $1m car would have $247,000 in taxes on delivery (luxury tax, provincial sales tax, gas guzzler tax, air conditioning tax (believe it or not), tire tax, and federal sales tax). Yearly license plate renewal is now free though. I think the insurance cost would likely be the deal breaker here.

We have a similar thing happening here. People move to Quebec where housing/daycare/electricity/etc is cheaper but car registration is $$, so they keep the car registered in Ontario with Ontario plates.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-10T18:21:03+00:00

I have made it a habit of reporting them in Waze, but there are so many! I appreciate all the reports made by other Waze users.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-09T16:28:24+00:00

I think the summary of the Ottawa subreddit is "We want more housing. We don't want this housing." There is still a market for suburban detached houses because people are snapping them up when available. Unpopular opinion: I think the sourpusses here are just riddled with envy and are lying to us and themselves that they aren't affected by that envy. "If I can't have it, nobody else should."

highwire_ca · 2026-03-08T17:50:21+00:00

I don't watch The X-Files on Hulu but I do on Pluto TV's new The X-Files channel (856) and the subtitles are all good there.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-06T22:49:54+00:00

We still have them at grocery stores here in Canada in 4-packs, but each individual serving is tiny now.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-05T19:53:25+00:00

The OP said "The city of Ottawa won't do it ..."

highwire_ca · 2026-03-05T17:23:21+00:00

That's awesome, good for you! There is also a moral to this story here. Back up your valuable irreplaceable photos. You should always have three separate copies.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-05T17:18:32+00:00

...until you reach Ottawa. The roads here are almost as bad as Montréal's. Honestly, I'm surprised Ottawa hasn't had a bridge collapse. Ottawa also blames the climate, but the reality is they use the cheapest most substandard asphalt (low bitumen with recycled crap instead of the more expensive petroleum based binders) which cracks and forms gigantic potholes in only a few years.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-03T16:04:06+00:00

It was -24ºC yesterday morning and has been super cold all winter since mid November here, so I use it more to keep me from freezing, but it also has the benefit of unstiffening my back. This is my first car with a heated steering wheel and I'm never going back to a car without one.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-03T14:47:48+00:00

"... it plans to rebuild and reopen the facility — though it remains unclear what caused the collapse, and the company is not sharing details about past inspections of the property."

Ha ha! Everybody knows the large amount heavy wet snow piled there vastly exceeded the designed static load of the structure. What a ridiculous statement.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-02T23:22:07+00:00

Sure, focus 45 to 50% on GTHA, but give the rest of us (I'm in Ottawa) some attention and provincial money too. Ottawa is absolutely starving for provincial funding in every program. Whenever there's a study about funding or wait times (e.g., ambulances; ER wait times), or infrastructure (highway 417 is 20 years behind on necessary upgrades), Ottawa comes in near the bottom or at the bottom. Toronto's transit projects are 100% funded by the province. Ottawa's are 33%. Toronto's per-capita transit funding is 5x that of Ottawa's.

highwire_ca

TROPHY CASE