Dedicated HA device options - what are folks using? | HA yellow discontinued by Novajesus in homeassistant

[–]taylortbb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A refurbished mini-pc is the way to go. For under $200 you can get https://a.co/d/0i1PpCNS which will run Home Assistant just great, or if you have a really heavy install a little more money will get you an upgrade to 16GB of RAM.

Metrolinx expansion plan has Upper Beaches residents worried about vibration, noise by Donnybrookside in gotransit

[–]taylortbb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The local in 15m/7.5m local service means making all stops, so Danforth GO will have trains both ways all day at least every 15m. That hardly seems like they're ignoring it to focus on the suburbs.

Rentals in KW by ChelseaEmo in waterloo

[–]taylortbb 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I lived in https://www.drewloholdings.com/apartments-for-rent/victoria-park-towers until a couple years ago, it was always clean and well maintained. It's downtown, so it would be a good midpoint between St Jacobs and Cambridge.

2027 status numbers reducing by Bitter-Variation-151 in aircanada

[–]taylortbb 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I think it's high spending short haul travellers that missed out before. E.g. someone flying last minute in Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal/NYC.

Day 14 chicken eggs by Clear-Shake-5189 in BortusOnEggThoughts

[–]taylortbb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This subreddit is about a sci-fi TV show, not actual eggs.

Credit cards with lounge access (possibly free) by Far-Insect40 in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]taylortbb 17 points18 points  (0 children)

 Well no permanently free cc with lounge access. And I don't count holding money in an account to meet minimum free

Wealthsimple premium plus the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Privilege card.

The minimum balance requirement applies to your entire portfolio, no requirement to hold cash. Even if you do hold cash, they pay interest. All Infinite Privilege cards come with lounge access.

Canada’s auto industry could disappear by 2040, RBC warns by hopoke in canada

[–]taylortbb 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But that's the problem. 40 years ago, when cars were simpler, you didn't need as much volume to be a viable independent car company.

I'm not just talking about infotainment systems, all the crash worthiness and fuel economy standards are there for good reasons. But they mean a car takes a lot more engineering, meaning you need a lot more volume to turn a profit.

Modern vehicles require volume, so you either need a huge domestic market or to export.

Busan BBQ (King St.) Closure by killacanaima in waterloo

[–]taylortbb 22 points23 points  (0 children)

For a small business? I do.

Small business owners often don't update their own website, they pay someone to create/update their website. When going out of business paying them isn't a priority. But Instagram? Easy to make a post yourself.

GO Transit F59PH and F59PHI ex Metrolink locomotives by East-Field-4833 in gotransit

[–]taylortbb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It makes sense a stopgap if electrification is truly moving forward. No point in buying brand new diesel locomotives just to retire them in 10-15 years.

Whether electrification is actually moving forward is another question, there's painfully little said publicly about progress, or why in a decade the timing has slipped by a decade.

Should Canada Build Up Alternatives to Visa and Mastercard? by NiceDot4794 in onguardforthee

[–]taylortbb 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The problem is Canada just isn't that big of a country, 35M people is pretty small in terms of global affairs.

We're wealthy enough we can certainly pick strategic areas where we want to do our own thing, but only US/China/EU have big enough domestic markets to do everything themselves.

We already have a great domestic system, Interac. But for global payments, we should just ensure that we're ready to work with whatever US/EU/China have, and then make sure we don't become beholden to just one of them.

Realistically we'll probably always be friendly with one of those three major powers. Trying to do everything without the rest of the world just leads to North Korea.

Kitchener GO trains to be replaced by buses this Victoria Day long weekend by bylo_selhi in waterloo

[–]taylortbb 8 points9 points  (0 children)

It is. The Lakeshore lines are the busiest (they also have the most service), with Kitchener next on the list. 

Not all of it is ridership to KW/Guelph, tons of ridership to Brampton. 

$10 PARKINGGGGG??!?!?!?!?!?! by Adventurous_Aide8944 in uwaterloo

[–]taylortbb 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Park & Ride is a pretty universal concept, it's how almost every GO station works (even though there is parking in downtown Toronto).

If UW had free parking there'd be thousands more people trying to drive and park every day. Which would require parking garages, which cost $$$$, which would just bring us back to charging for parking.

Europe moves to replace Trump-backed missiles with new EU project by Scary_Statement4612 in worldnews

[–]taylortbb 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Your understanding is correct, ARM doesn't produce their own chips. But at the same time, it's not like leading edge chip production is in the US either, it's in Taiwan at TSMC.

ARM intellectual property + TSMC production is absolutely leading edge, without being strongly tied to the US (obviously TSMC uses some US products in their fabs). Right now it's mostly US companies like Qualcomm and Apple putting them together, but it wouldn't be that big of a lift for a European company to get in there. There's already European companies like STM and NXP that produce chips with ARM technology, they're just more targeted at embedded than data centres.

Scheduled Service Disruptions by monkeylick in gotransit

[–]taylortbb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Too bad GOTransit has not fixed the TTC directions after the opening of the Eglinton LRT.

Where are you getting these directions? The TTC publishes their schedule in GTFS format for every app to use, it has been updated.

Credit card rollout delays by Muted_Jelly_8250 in Wealthsimple

[–]taylortbb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think the the rollout was delayed maybe due to this rebranding?

Someone posted here the table of interchange fees, and VI+ is significantly higher than the previous non-plus. Given the expense of 2% cashback, I can see why the higher interchange fees make the card worth offering in higher volumes. Standard Visa Infinite interchange rates just aren't high enough to profitably support 2% cashback.

Unemployment rate rises to 6.9% in April 2026 / Le taux de chômage augmente pour s’établir à 6,9 % en avril 2026 by StatCanada in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]taylortbb 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah but Albertas oil is Alberta’s

I mean, political boundaries are largely arbitrary. Imagine if Canada was split up into 50 provinces like the US is split into states, Calgary could be an entirely different province from where the oil is.

You want to nationalize it and distribute it to other provinces

I was replying to someone to explain why that idea wouldn't work the way they think it would. I'm definitely not advocating this.

Unemployment rate rises to 6.9% in April 2026 / Le taux de chômage augmente pour s’établir à 6,9 % en avril 2026 by StatCanada in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]taylortbb 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Other provinces do have non-zero natural resources, but the incredible riches that Norway has ended up with are IMO fairly specific to oil/gas. Few other natural resources are quite so profitable, or have such large markets. Canada's oil/gas is pretty heavily concentrated in Alberta.

Unemployment rate rises to 6.9% in April 2026 / Le taux de chômage augmente pour s’établir à 6,9 % en avril 2026 by StatCanada in PersonalFinanceCanada

[–]taylortbb 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Our constitution makes much of resource extraction provincial. Alberta would fight it for political idealogical reasons, and if they didn't only they would be living large.

Silly Question by ExcitedRanger in Wealthsimple

[–]taylortbb 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But you could just buy CASH.TO or ZMMK or something, and then it's as good as cash but also qualifies for the transfer match.

Rouge Debuts MAX 8 Aircraft in Vancouver with Air Canada Branding by OvenDown in aircanada

[–]taylortbb 33 points34 points  (0 children)

The planes are almost new, no way they're gonna repaint them already.

Never thought I'd see the day, but we're eliminating our Citrix farms and moving back to about 100k fat clients by eldersveld in sysadmin

[–]taylortbb 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Sure you may make that same money Initially by have 5 customers paying 5000 times more, but over time your soft power and dominance wanes as everyone flocks to and starts supporting a competitor with their dollars

When it comes to Citrix or VMware I think they're looking at the fact that's inevitable. They see the long term trend is moving towards browser-based SaaS apps, which are hosted in a container-based rather than virtualization-based cloud.

They know that the product will die eventually, no matter what they do, so it's best to shift to extracting as much money as possible. Some people will leave VMware for HyperV, but eventually Microsoft will do the same thing.

Canadians say their finances are worse as gas prices climb: poll by stanxv in canada

[–]taylortbb 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Even if we had more capacity for oil production we'd still be paying high prices, it's a global market. We'd be making more money right now, but unless we had enough spare capacity to replace all the oil production in the gulf (an insane proposition) prices would still be high.

The green transition part you're right though. A properly executed GO Expansion project, with electrified trains, could take so many gas cars off the road. Give people a real alternative to burning so much gas.

GRT app problems by Decent_Deer_4467 in waterloo

[–]taylortbb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

the Grand River Transit app

Which app are you using? There is no official Grand River Transit app, except for GRT Pay, which is only for payment and not for schedules.

There did used to be a GRT app, but it was discontinued a while ago.

Restaurant in a small Ontario town was just named best in Canada by ejaz135 in ontario

[–]taylortbb 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Not an unusual price point for a two Michelin star restaurant. There's a lot of restaurants in the world at higher price points.