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I mean, he's not wrong.
  • Susan Crawford wrote on and talked about this (mis)handling of telecoms in the US context years ago, the government letting the companies divide regions up and ensure a lack of competition.

    My reading of the situation in Canada for internet and wireless is that it was a historical mix of:

    • lacking political will/interest to govern from day one
    • a policy of letting the free market run until it’s a major problem
    • follow the US lead for anything new
    • and support the (then) recently de-regulated incumbent (Bell) to dominate
    • give competitive advantages to Canadian companies vs allowing foreign competition even if it means worse outcomes for Canadian consumers (better to protect the Canadian economy from foreign interests than to ensure consumer best interests).
  • Saved Posts to RSS
  • Sadly, yes.

    RSS off of other profile content (such as posts) serves an acceptable function I guess (e.g. cross-posting, blog feed) but sharing saved posts does not meet the cut for some reason.

    Feel free to jump on that ticket and articulate a more compelling argument, if it’s still open. More votes might change their stance over time.

  • what's your experience washing sneakers in the washing machine?
  • Yes, you can wash sneakers in the washer. Delicate, cold, small amount of detergent, laces out (Dan!) and in a laundry bag or the pair entirely in a bag laundry bag.

    You can wash with other sneakers but I wouldn’t wash with clothes.

    Consider getting a boot/mitt/hat dryer (like the ones at Costco). Very handy for quick drying and no mold, bacteria, fungi stink. I use mine all year round for this and weather related needs.

    Note that the fabric on the soles might let go over time. The glue isn’t so strong.

  • Why Canadians are angry with their biggest supermarket
  • I actually think the boycotts and sustained bad press about Loblaws might be helping more than this grocery code of conduct, whatever it’s supposedly doing.

    But good news, everyone!

    Amendments were made in December to the Competition Act that should help, eventually.

    Here are some details you never asked for but I’ll post anyway.

    I read a good blog post about it on Lemmy somewhere, but I can’t find it now unfortunately.

    The gist is, from memory:

    • the act was originally written to protect the Canadian economy from being overtaken by foreign competition (I.e. US especially).
    • it would favour Canadian companies provided that it would benefit the country economically overall, regardless of the harms to Canadians in terms of the lack of competition (artificially high prices, lack of coverage, access, etc).
    • these companies were protected from civil suits for those harms.
    • the result was the best possible conditions for the consolidation of market share to the very few Canadian companies and too much cost or difficulty for foreign companies to bother competing with. Very often, these became family dynasties (The Westons, Rogerses, Sobeys’ owners - Irving?, etc).

    But some of the changes in December basically alter those considerations about harms and these companies are legally exposed to civil suits if the harms are realized. This could help.

    In some ways, I suppose we should be grateful for Loblaws’ exceptional greed of late because maybe nothing would change if we weren’t angry and focused enough on these problems.

    I see this as a very long long overdue reaction to the telecom and grocery chain debacles. It’s hard to know for certain because these commercial dynasties are very tight with the political dynasties. It seems like they don’t really want anything to change. Just posturing for the cameras and then let things go back to “normal”.

    Take the Internet, since its inception in Canada. One of the highest prices in the world. Same with wireless. Lately, the CRTC has helped kill almost all independent ISPs through long drawn out reviews and delay tactics on wholesale fiber rates, even after the lobbyist as Head was replaced with someone less duplicitous; someone who started with the mandate to focus policy on consumer benefits and protections as opposed to the industry. Still going on.

    And of course, allowing Rogers to buy Shaw and Freedom Mobile. Selling off to videotron doesn’t help as much as a viable fourth player would have.

    And now it feels like they’re sabre rattling about grocery regulations, encouraging Loblaws to drop prices until we forget about it but leave the door open for these problems to happen again. Then run around again trying to woo a foreign company/investment to come to Canada just like Wind Mobile, fail due to favouritism of Canadian incumbent companies and get bought and sold in 10-20 years. I don’t blame these foreign companies for avoiding Canada. Too risky.

    The government is very conflicted right now it seems. But I’m hoping the changes to the act will turn this around for future industry decisions.

  • YSK: The Skin Deep web site catalogs personal hygiene products and cosmetics, each rated with a hazard/irritation score and per-ingredient details.
  • A colleague of mine just pointed this app out. I love that this exists.

    But make sure to dig into the additional info and draw your own conclusions.

    For instance, it ranked Pure Life water (a typical bottle of water) at 65/100 because it contained sodium bicarbonate. This is something in the category of emulsifiers, a category that one study related to breast cancer, a preliminary study noted to have discrepancies. That’s a few leaps of correlation via a single one-time study with documented issues.

    Anyway, I’d say the app is still worthwhile then having no easy guidance on product health and safety.

    Here’s the iOS link: https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/yuka-food-cosmetic-scanner/id1092799236

  • Dreams of AI
  • Flipp allows for some of this desired capability now through digital flyer scraping and online feeds, APIs. Maybe things have gotten better on the API side over time.

    Pretty sure it’s a Canadian app, coincidentally.

  • I just finished setting up Linux Mint for an old buddy of mine on his old dog of a laptop, rendering it useful once again!
  • Thanks, that’s very kind of you to offer.

    I’ve got quite a few older machines. I’m pretty keen to figure out the top four, at least.

    Any advice on the following and/or on the method of identifying viable distros and versions in general is very appreciated.

    • MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53 GHz, Mid 2009)
    • iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009)
    • Mac mini Server (Mid 2010)
    • MacBook Air (11-inch, Mid 2013)
    • MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008)
    • iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
    • Mac mini 2018
  • EmulationStation Controller and Game-Specific Input Settings

    I have an X-Arcade dual joystick that I’m trying to use with Arcade games via EmulationStation on the Steam Deck.

    The joysticks work but I’m having two problems that I’m looking to solve. They should be universal problems, not just about this joystick unit, so I’m hoping someone here can guide me.

    1. How to set controller order within EmulationStation? I use a Steam Controller to navigate the Deck otherwise but have to turn it off when I start an arcade game or the X-Arcade won’t work. I think it’s the controller order I’ve read about but can’t see where to set this.

    2. How to set controller inputs for a specific game in EmulationStation? I see the input settings menu but I believe this overrides all games. I don’t see how I can bring up the old MAME menu for game specific inputs. Do I have to do this via config file in desktop mode instead?

    The joystick unit has the PCB upgrade that allows X-input. I can see both joysticks as XBox 360. The deck is updated as of August 1st stable release. EmulationStation with 2.1.1 and all other desktop application updates applied including EmuDeck emulators and flatpaks. Based on some other issue and advice, I have previously pointed EmulationStation to a different and newer MAME emulator vs the one that came with the EmuDeck install.

    2
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)TO
    ToffeeIsForClosers @lemmy.world
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