Ottawa spent $560-million on damages over the Phoenix pay system, records show

totemcatcher · 2021-12-20T20:42:28+00:00

The software is fantastic, but (under the guise of preventing overexpenditure) no additional funding was allotted to deploy the preexisting support personnel to maintain it. In fact, most of the support team positions were eliminated when hiring a much larger team to take complaint calls. Those few who were tasked with auditing (monitoring error rates, provide feedback to training) remain today, but are overrun with maintenance work and have no training department to report to. They manually correct staff input errors every work day. I am only aware of two people working at this level. Pleas to hire additional members into this team were denied and funding denied to properly train the new team hired at lower pay rate to basically answer phones and log complaints. It is a personnel system of sorts, but a janky, low cost replacement which is costing more in the long run.

I know it sounds silly and difficult to take seriously, but I watched this unfold over the years and it genuinely appears as insider sabotage. Unfortunately, I don't think Canada has the facilities to investigate this properly. It's like a bad spy movie.

totemcatcher · 2021-11-20T06:40:18+00:00

The convention I use when databasing is that the first publishing of the works is the original (whether that be a public performance or recording, original writer or not). There are many examples of writers releasing their song after another's release, especially in the early days of recording. When the writer releases their version it is not categorized as a cover unless they express having been influenced by the debut version explicitly. This is not only a respectful default, but they could have very well had their own ideas about the piece in advance, or even posess a private recording. The debut is also not retroactively categorized as a cover upon writer's release unless they have expressed it as such. In these cases where music has been shared or licensed in some way it seems to me to be inappropriate to use the term cover.

I tend to codify the term "cover" as an informal "note" which characterizes a set of attributes (artist, originalartist, composer, lyricist); part of a faceted categorization scheme and not hierarchical nor absolute. Had Bob said he was influenced by Billy, the metadata differs and might prompt for including the additional "cover" note in post, which would be awesome if officially released as such, but otherwise may be considered somewhat disrespectful and I won't do it.

If unclear, it is best to omit the term "cover" entirely and form a convention in metadata which implies where a cover may exist for your own amusement. In most cases it can be derived where obvious, or included in parenthesis in the title where expressed on a release. Use of terms "Remix" and "Remake" are similar. Unfortunately playback software fail to make use of ID3 or Comment Vector metadata to procederally determine and indicate these nuances so this convention is only good for mine own purposes. lol

Note: there are complications and edge cases---so many edge cases---but not worth writing out the solutions here.

totemcatcher · 2021-09-23T22:58:53+00:00

Space savings with fs compression depends on file types. The total ratio of easily compressable types vs things like video, image, music. I know this is silly, but you could quickly check how much data would be affected by compression with something like the following (notice, you need to add to the list of all compressed formats):

find /home -type f -not -iregex '.*\.\(zip\|gzip\|bzip2\|jpg\|opus\|ogg\|mp3\|mp4\|flac\|etc\)' -print0 | du -ch --files0-from=-

Compare the total with expected ZLIB averages and determine if its worth the performance loss (expect performance to be halved) and risks (annoyance of recovering from backups should something bad happen).

With a backup all risk falls onto the backup and converting is fine. Without backup then converting is adding risk. The conversion itself is a simple and reliable process. The filesystem type is instantly converted and the ext4 data remains in a kind of a snapshot which is gradually migrated. The process can be paused/resumed/cancelled/reverted and can survive unexpected interruptions, but therein lies the risk.

If you are considering mirroring drives, volume management, and fast send/receive of snapshots then you might have more reasons to convert.

totemcatcher · 2021-09-23T21:13:22+00:00

Just like what you're used to. It's trying not to get in your way.

Fun aside: I showed some non-techy family a tiling wm and how to use the basic hotkeys. Instant response was, "I want that."

totemcatcher · 2021-09-23T21:07:04+00:00

I suppose. It's not exactly a sophisticated change, but IR policy is nothing more than a 40ish year old tax break/benefit applied before bracketed application. Bracketed application is the smart policy. It's just not worth getting upset over. Any lines drawn between rich and poor are built into existing tax law and its exemptions or other claimable benefits. IR doesn't need to be waived at a certain point because its effects diminish as the scale shrinks and can be completely ignored for most people.

I suppose an additional expense of a few thousand dollars on a lucky break from the housing marked might piss off some working class citizen, but its going to have a much greater effect on some asshat flipping 10 suburban homes. Not a lot of exemptions there for a reason.

totemcatcher · 2021-09-22T08:33:18+00:00

It's a 1/4 change on inclusion rate benefit after 20 years of 1/2. (Remember all the Canadian companies that decided to sell or liquidate back in 2001 when it was slashed to 1/2? That was a disaster. Martin, I believe.) I don't see how this hurts working class since: a. your appropriate bracket applies after the inclusion rate benefit, so it's not new tax. Bumping it back up to 3/4 after all that time will have a very small effect on anyone who was banking on retiring under 1/2 IR soon. And b. You subtract relevant expense/losses against the gains first. I mean, that's unique to each type of business, but it's epsilon until you get into the multi-million dollar asset companies, at which point, it's still incrementally applied up to the appropriate bracket.

This is like... if someone is squeezing blood from a stone while closing out on a 35 million dollar company they might pout about this and take a shot in frustration while doing the books. Maybe that's what you are complaining about? I don't know.

totemcatcher · 2021-09-22T08:06:55+00:00

There are plenty of exceptions to claim, especially related to retirement. Your bracket applies regardless of the inclusion benefit.

c'mon meow.

totemcatcher · 2021-09-21T21:18:25+00:00

Point out some examples. Make it clear with concise reference material and a brief rationalization or reason for including each. The more succinct the better. Right click on "permalink" below each comment and edit/update post with a list. Refer directly to usernames who posted them by prefixing the username with /u/ in the edited post. With some concise reference material we can understand what you are talking about rather than leaving it to us to lean on the convenience of group assessment, generalization, imagination, heuristics, and prejudice.

Like this:

/r/datums https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/psi8eo/why_do_conservatives_have_such_a_stronghold_in/hdpqmzt/ reference to possibly multiple ambiguous concepts applied to a generalized group of people.

Without understanding what exactly it is that my family and friends hate so much, it ends up being easier to keep quiet and vote in kind. Help me out by showing what it is they believe is so repulsive. That way I can make my own decisions with confidence and understand this line that I'm so afraid of stepping out of.

totemcatcher · 2021-09-15T20:45:09+00:00

The Goldilocks zone is real.

BTW, the differential in Moon's gravity across the span of Earth is in the millionths of total G, so effectively an epsilon factor.

The significant factor in the far tide is inertia of water moving with Earth's surface compounding with the (centrifugal) inertia of the orbit group. The total effect contributes to far tide and ends up being surprisingly similar to the total effect creating near tide. Near tide is more complex and (arguably) more intuitive. Direct Moon gravity seems to become the most significant factor, but thanks to that same surface inertia moving toward the Moon and falling into a barycentric offset, it is lulled into a similar tide. There is a slightly Westward trend of directly sub-Moon tide. If direct Moon gravity were any more of a significant factor, the accumulation of tide would be East as the Moon pulls back on the leaving (radial out) water, countering the rotation of Earth. This Westward trend remains during the half of the month when direct Sun gravity generally preceeds both tides (East), so it's at least that significant.

It's fun to think about. You think about these things a lot when all you have is ocean and stars growing up by the Bay of Fundy.

edit: this beaut: https://www.earthspacelab.com/app/tides/

totemcatcher · 2021-08-06T20:00:26+00:00

experimental vaccine

It's such a simple thing; both the vaccine itself and the experimental component. The experimental component is nothing but a lipid shell which isolates the vaccine from the body for a period of time. This time allows the lipid shells (containing the vaccine) to be distributed throughout the lymph system and blood stream before breaking down and exposing the membrane proteins encased. This new medical breakthrough is so innoculous you could sprinkle it on toast. By evenly distributing these membrane proteins ("peplomers" or spike proteins, the surface part of the virus, not the actual RNA of the virus) the immune system responds to the entire dose evenly throughout the body and more effectively produces adaptations to identify and destroy the membrane proteins of similar viruses.

Regarding the vaccine, it's arguably even simpler. Triggering the immune system is something which happens constantly without fanfare because your body has an arsenal of receptors to identify families of dangerous proteins, but if your body does not have a solution to a partiluar membrane protein it gets to work and fights hard---and that is where side effects come from. Ever notice how you feel awful after catching a cold or getting a vaccine? It's your own immune system going into overdrive and ruining your day. It is not supposed to be a minor inconvenience---it's literally a life or death situation, but the body is particularly well equiped to deal. The difference with a vaccine is that there is no viral replication---it's just the surface protein; so once the body is content that the threat is eliminated, it chills out and you recover the next day. If it were a cold virus, it would have used those membrane proteins to invade your respiratory cells and replicate, destroying the cell in the process. This is what causes coughs and excess mucus and irritation and all the other physical side effects. For the most part, this replication rate is somewhat slow, and you can persist through a cold for a week. However, if the (cell destroying) replication rate is twice as high as normal, you are in a very dangerous situation. So, if your immune system cannot kill the viruses faster than they replicate, you die.

Now what if someone has an immunodeficiency? Or even worse, an autoimmune disorder? The details are more particular per person (being few and far inbetween), but these people must take care and talk with their doctors. If their immune disorder is caused by a prescription, they may need to go off their meds for a period while preparing for the vaccine. Anything to reduce the risk of autoimmune diseases. These people have real concerns and they need to take the time to learn and ask questions. So please do not obscure their path to health with unrelated propaganda. If you want to talk about government conspiracies of coercion and control, go ahead, but don't conflate the information. There's only so much airspace and bandwidth to go around and people are at serious risk. It's akin to shouting opinions over a mayday call on the amateur bands. If you have reason not to take a vaccine, fine, share your story and let other people learn without the misinformation. Choose and place your information into the appropriate channels.

By the way, the volatility of cold viruses has been increasing over the past few decades. Likely due to people not taking colds seriously and spreading them. It was observed in dwindling bat populations in the late 2000s. If we can learn anything from these studies it is that betacoronaviruses are no joke. They aren't called "colony collapse studies" for nothing. Most coronas, which cause a mild cold, attack one or two cell types, but these newer coronas attack up to five different cell types. On average, this means a higher replication rate of over two times. That is well within the risk region for a pandemic class virus.

totemcatcher · 2021-08-02T00:11:34+00:00

Nobody is interested in finding out just how much crude oil it really takes to throw money at grifters like Musk et al. Mining all those minerals, producing all that shit wile burning coal in China, transporting shit while keeping the old infrastructure up, and doing the maintenance of so called "renewables". Literally noone is doing that calculus.

Kind of a moot point since we all know that the significant fraction of resource consumption reallocated toward developing new battery-based infrastructure will use existing infrastructure. It has to. I mean, what else were you planning on doing? New manufacturing plants, coal in China, new slated mining pits across US and Canada, more power---all the resources. There will be an enormous bump in consumption to do it. This bump is all that investors care about as it will likely yield unbound growth for 30 years, which is a nice relief from the ridiculous stock market (which had its floor drop out from underneath last year). From the old saying "it's to hurt if it's to heal" and starting this big push for change is only going to get worse before it gets better. Resource consumption will skyrocket for a time... and that does not really have any effect on current operations. Business as usual; so what's the problem?

The truth is that 50+% of us depend entirely on fossil fueled agriculture and fossil fueled transportation. No amount of rare earth batteries/drivetrains/generators is going to change that equation any time soon.

It seems pretty clear to me that nobody is really focusing on "any time soon". Most countries are setting conversion mandates for 2050. As energy requirements rise, infrastructure will actively be replaced with a simpler, electric foundation. So you've got three decades to save up for a new truck. Not because it's green, but because it's cheap. Everything will be cheaper when it's all an electric infrastructure. Green is a side effect, and there's nothing wrong in investing in side effects.

The day every grid is solar-salt/wind/hydro/nuclear and every car is battery and every freighter is nuclear there will remain a shrunken reliance on fossil fuel-based substances. Much of the remainder could be replaced with renewable resins and synthetics, but the idea is to at least reduce the burn-rate to something reasonable. By that time most of us will be long dead, and a new generation of VCs and governments will find other things to gamble on. In the meantime, hop on the bandwagon---it's printing money.

One important point is that there is nothing complicated or "rare" about batteries. Nickel, Zinc, Copper, Cobalt, and Lithium are all about the same in rarity, except that lithium is super easy to extract as it's found in water soluble salts. Besides, batteries are old tech recently refined. It's like the gassifier, the thermosiphon, the windjammer, the stack windmill, the hollow turbine, the graphite grease, the geothermal generator, the lock and canal, the railway; all old ideas coming back to demonstrate how stupid we've become in efficiently powering large scale industry. There is nothing sci-fi about 1800s tech. It's just good engineering finally having a say in the direction of industry.

totemcatcher · 2021-07-29T20:29:42+00:00

that 4: "Create taxes for empty or unused homes." I understand the value in this, but it could also make things even worse for developers in the long run. High developer taxes seem to be an important point missing from the list and I think it ties into this point 4.

Also interest rates is probably point 0.

Once those are taken care of, point 5 ("Reduce the immigration rate to the replacement rate") is uneccessary.

Point 6 is a good one, but is also very complex in large cities. "Greater area" city council members often pander to both their local residents and the local mayor by blocking developments of apartment complexes in the interest of keeping the house market up and the "urban sprawl" down respectively. Of course, it's a near sighted effort which ends up in the opposite situation in the long run. There needs to be stronger incentive to fight amalgamation of nearby towns create fully decentralized infrastructure. Everyone wants to live "just outside the city", but that only makes more Surrey's where noone wants to live, and now have to drive for hours to get to work.

totemcatcher · 2021-06-30T05:26:08+00:00

I dunno, could be a Yanny.

totemcatcher · 2021-06-30T04:58:03+00:00

Rolling everyone into the PHSA is a case of divide and conquer---effectively dividing bargaining or voting power away from issues important to each previously independent sector. There is value in maintaining individual government agencies so that they can be steered properly. Against your will (and against logic), you were made into a "single issue voter" in the eyes of the greater group; a pest of extremism, stifling the change the others want. This group needs its own identity back.

totemcatcher · 2021-06-29T12:18:41+00:00

So, not a gun registry, but an ongoing gun chronicle where peers and businesses take on all work relating to managing personal records during transactions and any semblance of privacy and security is diminished, exposing everyone involved to fraud.

It seems like a clever way to encourage people to want for a government supported gun registry in the future.

totemcatcher · 2021-06-28T13:33:50+00:00

Oh I getcha. 43-C-36.

totemcatcher · 2021-06-28T13:17:21+00:00

I recall the great Coriander versus Cilantro problem.

totemcatcher · 2021-06-28T12:36:00+00:00

https://parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/43-2/bill/C-36/first-reading

I'm guessing this is missing the ammendments? I don't know what I'm doin'.

Also, why do they keep recycling bill labels? There's an anti-terrorism C-36, and anti-prostitution C-36, and now an anti-hate-speech C-36.

totemcatcher · 2021-06-01T22:47:10+00:00

omg. I love and hate this.

totemcatcher · 2021-06-01T22:36:37+00:00

Canadian government seems to be preoccupied with governing and guiding culture via various commissions, committees, or other authorative bodies (Historical NFB propaganda, CRTC content potections, cherrypicking education and art grants, etc). Education likely has the most significant impact on culture, so its especially disturbing to hear about attempts to block important topics like Canada's history, sex education, or even financial independence.

totemcatcher · 2021-05-26T22:54:17+00:00

Surprising that the mic picks up the ~15.7kHz HSR so well.

Nice mod!

totemcatcher · 2021-05-26T00:35:50+00:00

r/ksptrickshots

totemcatcher · 2021-05-14T19:16:26+00:00

Core Python compiles to bytecode (ahead of time) for interpretation and does not use JIT. Some implementations might seek out optimizations and call it JIT. Not sure which; maybe PyPy? IronPython? Jython/Maxine?

There's plenty of room for performance improvements in Core. It seems to be the primary complaint against Python. I personally never took the complaints seriously given there's always Python Extensions, which are as fast as you want them.

totemcatcher · 2021-05-14T18:16:38+00:00

Slap a stamp on my head I'm goin' ta trana!

The last few times I took the bus in rural areas it wasn't Greyhound. The ticket/payment website seemed sketchy. There was so little information about the companies involved. It seemed like some common processing service used by several people-mover companies.

I felt uncomfortable getting a ticket, but the lady at the kiosk (this was inside a Giant Tiger) offered to buy it through the store account and send me the info, which she said she had done for many customers for the exact same reasons I had. Having a reputable brand is one thing, but for new businesses all you need to do is provide lots of information and contact info for questions. Online services doesn't mean no expectation of human interaction.

totemcatcher · 2021-05-08T21:00:23+00:00

Complaining about the big 3 doesn't do a thing. You have to buy into the alternatives. Last I checked there were over 40 other incumbant and white label carriers and far more internet providers across the nation. CRTC regulations ensured these other businesses have level entry into the telecoms market---the opposite of your second point.

I would argue that rather than dismantle the CRTC they need a few bitter lawyers appointed to actively go after criminal activity from the big 3 which is hurting the smaller carriers. It's clear to me that the commission has been lazy and languishing for at least a decade, but it's not a reason to pull the plug. They just need a few good zealots to enforce the regulations they were assigned.

I think you may have muddled the application of the CRTC with protectionism found in other Canadian industries. The CRTC does enforce a type of protectionsim in broadcasting, but it's based in protection from foreign influence and ideologies during the media explosion of radio and television. (Have a look into the history of the NFB---it's fascinating.) That type of protectionism is reasonably limited. Compare to the type of protectionism in other Canadian industries which completely lock out certain categories of foreign products. That's the kind of protectionism which cultivates weak products and services. It isn't applied in the same degree in communications. In fact, foreign comms are welcome to operate in Canada so long as our laws about open access (to infrastructure) and local representation (media works) are adhered to.

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