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I had some fun history with this OS.

First, we had ICON computers in my elementary school, we'd all try to spin the trackball as quickly as it would go. Not sure if we ever broke one.

The second is when I worked at BlackBerry. I was building a feature that allowed you to use your QNX BlackBerry as a Bluetooth HID device. You could connect it to any device and use the trackpad + physical keyboard to remotely control a computer. It was fantastic. You could hook your laptop up to a project and control slides from your BlackBerry.

Then some product manager with questionable decision making told me to lock it down so it would only work with Blackberry Playbooks for "business purposes", rendering it effectively useless (since Playbooks are all ewaste). I distinctly remember that meeting where Dan Dodge argued that since it's a standard, it should not be locked down.

I respect Dan Dodge for that, I don't think I'd work with that PM again.


QNX became BlackBerry 10—-still the best mobile OS. Too bad only a dozen of us ever used it.


My Passport was my favourite phone ever, I think if apps like WhatsApp hadn't stopped supporting it I might still be using it.


Oh wow - I didn't realize that ICON was based on this - I remember it was quite advanced in comparison to the generic PC computers at the time.

With one exception - you could crash other ICON systems or the overall network just via machine-machine chatting functions.


KDE Connect is honestly just that but better in some respects. And honestly, it's great.


I wish we were able to preserve the ICON experience in an emulator. I bet even a browser has enough compute power to emulate a network of them.


Bridge/Blend was cool shame it was restricted to Playbooks and desktop software. Slipstream had some pretty solid ideas.


FWIW, I used that HID function you worked on and I loved it too!


Yup.

On startup, it runs cpuid and assigns each operation the most optimal function pointer for that architecture.

In addition to things like ‘supports avx’ or ‘supports sse4’ some operations even have more explicit checks like ‘is a fifth generation celeron’. The level of optimization in that case was optimizing around the cache architecture on the cpu iirc.

Source: I did some dirty things with chromes native client and ffmpeg 10 years ago.


I like the way you think. As a Canadian, I’m disgusted that we educate our youth and then send them to the US to take jobs from Americans and pay taxes to the Americans. We should be putting them to work in Canada instead so we can build companies and industries in Canada instead of America.

/s, but not really.


> We should be putting them to work in Canada instead so we can build companies and industries in Canada instead of America

OK...I'll bite. Every Canadian government, of either party, has agreed with you for the last sixty years. Your country has excellent universities, the infrastructure is decent, the politics are non-violent...and yet people bail. I could say the same about the UK as well, but it's harder for their brains to drain to the US.

So: why is Canada failing to hold on to their homegrown talent? Is it a "push out" of Canada (driving talent away) or a "pull in" to the US (America having something irresistible)?


Don’t forget sonarr for tv shows


Every once in a while I try to become an Amazon seller through FBA. I sell quality goods without a huge markup.

My latest attempt resulted in 1/3 of the goods being returned because they could be sourced cheaper elsewhere (eg AliExpress) after they were tested, or they were swapped by the buyer with defective goods purchase elsewhere returned (they had heavy wear). In the case where the goods were still functional, the packaging was damaged and I had to pay for the returns.

My conclusion is that amazons liberal return policies only allow something to be sold profitably at a 2-3x markup. Hence everything being garbage.

I won’t attempt it again.


Where do you sell your goods then?


As a consumer I love liberal return policies, as I can buy something I’m not sure about to try it out. When I was in Colombia, but avoided buying some AirPods because I couldn’t try them on, and once purchased I could not return them. When I buy shoes online , I’ll buy maybe 7 pairs, find the best fit, and return rest.

As a vendor, I can’t imagine dealing with a high percentage of returns. I don’t know what the solution is.


how do you feel about the resource waste of such return policies? Shipping all these items to then return most of them is an insane amount of waste. And sometimes returned items cannot be resold so they are thrown away. Imo there should be clear limits on returns


Amazon prefers that people return goods. Last month, I bought something and immediately on next day price fell a bit. Contacting amazon support to see if they would offer me a partial refund of the difference(as my order didn't still ship), they told me that they don't do that anymore and I should deny the delivery and order at new price. After 2 days of my second order, first order was actually shipped(irrelevant to me at this stage), but the price now fell significantly(~35% of original), so I simply ordered at a new price and waited. Took me around 1.5 month to get my thing, but ultimately, this could be avoided if amazon was nice enough to give me a partial refund.

Also, here in EU, amazon recently reduced their return window, from 30 days to 14 days after receiving, so some limits are being put in place, because some of my friends order a lot of things to make unboxing videos/tiktok and other crap and then return it, which is real waste.


I'd prefer not to. In my case, it's nearly impossible to find shoes that fit. My size is not available in stores.


The solution is pricing it in.

Like stores that sold physical goods had to price in things like staff or shoplifting or business rates.


Assuming these mortgages are insured through CMHC, would HSBC be on the hook or the insurance system when some of these mortgages fail?

Canadians are certainly paying for social services used by folks who earn income abroad and pay little to no income tax in Canada, and folks who want to buy their first house are harmed by inflated housing prices.

My currently overseas landlord for some reason needed to travel to Canada to give birth, and was very eager to get their health card / banking documents sent to our rental despite it being rented out for several years prior to us arriving...


CMHC doesn't insure mortgages where the property value is equal to greater than $1 million, which in the Greater Toronto Area essentially limits it to condo purchases.


The March rate cuts are not guaranteed. The markets can stay irrational longer than you (the companies in question) can remain solvent.


I have two usb-c ports on my desktop. I’ve never used them.

Almost everything that has a usb-c connection can easily be connected with a c to a connector.

My laptop, on the other end, everything I use is usb-c, and everything that’s not is usb-c though a multi-port adapter.


I'd love to, but I need to finish my Space Exploration run first! 200h in and I'm not done with the four sciences (and I'm still using bots in space for the majority of them).


Lots of those nodes are not unique - especially if you're from breeding ground with more constraints (e.g. Iceland).


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