>Interesting that Canada is trying to do the same thing. Seems suspiciously similar.
Australia already did. Commonwealth countries share a lot in common, and of course a lot of problems are common across many countries.
But let's be real -- these countries are announcing it in lockstep because the US is a corrupt plutocracy, and the lords of the nation like Mark Zuckerberg will run to Trump and he'll have a little tantrum (tantrums that always, it should be mentioned, just hurt Americans more. Everything is in the service of the billionaire class) about this.
It's tougher for that grifter to do so if so many countries do it simultaneously.
>The idea that this is about surveillance is also interesting.
What idea is that? That firms from foreign nations will gather IDs, of absolutely zero value for the country, to ensure age compliance? How does this silly conspiracy work?
Kids motivated will just get around it. But I think it's pretty clear at this point, given the idiocracies rising worldwide and how everything is getting stupider/worse, that social media has not been a net good.
It's a citizenship check which is basically a ridiculous bar for the company. It is an outrageous demand. As Anthropic noted, many of the very employees who made this model are now barred from accessing it?
It's also security theatre. Let's pretend that Anthropic rolls out citizenship verification for every one of its users. So are American nationals less likely to use it to search for exploits? The notion is farcical.
That's practically what ITAR is all about, limiting access to US persons. We're focusing on the weaponization of AI models via cyber, but it also allows a small group of people to act in really nefarious ways. The intelligence is not just about being smart individually, as in no one person can make a pen, but companies like Apple and Google make great products, and they're just collection of persons and processes.
This administration is spectacularly corrupt (take a look at what is happening with the Gordie Howe bridge -- the entire government is beholden to billionaires if they just pad some pockets), so odds favour that OpenAI called some of their employees in government, looking to kneecap a competitor. They didn't make all of those massive donations for nothing.
The US has long been catastrophically corrupt, with a pay-to-play government, but this army of grifters and thieves have turned every dial to 11.
The whole "AI slop" noise is, at its core, human slop. It is people applying a hopefully pejorative label, trying to appeal to other slop aficionados that like whatever the current trendy slur is, in an objectively undefinable way.
In this case this guy likes the way Qt apps, they think it looks better, but it isn't a big trick they are revealing: They made it conform to the style they like, but this doesn't translate to anyone else in any measurable way. I think web apps looking like Qt apps feel like the late 90s and it's just weird, but my taste also is entirely subjective and mine alone.
Why did you casually jump to per capita GDP? Per capita GDP is finally going up after a long regression, and one of the reasons Canada slipped to a very small recession is that hundreds of thousands of migrants are leaving the country, their visas expired. When you remove a lot of people that were consuming housing and food and cell plans and delivery doordash, GDP drops.
You have two conflicting complaints simultaneously, and you should make up your mind. Were you happy when Canada's GDP was increasing courtesy of mass migration?
So are you happy with the changes? I'm super happy with it. I'm also quite pleased with how well Canada has weathered a criminal felon pedo that has tried his hardest to hurt us, many Americans blissfully oblivious.
And yup, the many tentacles are government are going to keep making laws and planning trains and doing pipeline projects and countless other programs -- they aren't restricted to whatever the imaginary pet is of a particular complainer -- and amazingly they can competently do all of this simultaneously! Not always in a way that everyone agrees with, though.
Per-capita GDP rose mainly because of what you said, declining immigration growth.
The issue is that our economy has been in decline for years, increasing the population dramatically masked that at, least in nominal GDP, and as population growth declines it reveals the weaknesses that were previously obscured. Simply reducing population growth is not enough to fix the last 10 years. Immigration was and is never the problem with our economy, a lack of real growth is.
So no, I wasn't happy when our GDP rose because of population growth, and I'm not happy today either because pulling a few levers on the immigration machine to change the numbers slightly doesn't fix anything. And it doesn't appear like the government is doing anything to fix it, instead focusing on the stuff we're talking about in this thread.
>The issue is that our economy has been in decline for years
Yup. We had a housing and immigration based economy.
>Simply reducing population growth is not enough to fix the last 10 years.
Ah, so damned if they do, damned if they don't. Yes, getting unchecked immigration under control was absolutely a problem that needed to be fixed (they still aren't there, and the TFW and "student" pipelines are a major remaining problem), and it was a contributor to our economy getting untethered.
>And it doesn't appear like the government is doing anything to fix it, instead focusing on the stuff we're talking about in this thread.
C-22 is a tiny, minor, law and justice bill that normal wouldn't get an iota of attention (it legitimately is a tiny, extremely simple bill). You think the government is "focusing" on this? Then you have zero idea how anything works. Pretending like the massive arms of government focused on this is necessary for your rhetoric though.
Further, saying they aren't doing anything else...yes, you are 100% a partisan. Nothing will please you. Everything is wrong. Everything is dire. But I'm sure only Saviour Party will fix things.
And it's funny that there are dipshits in here pretending like I'm the partisan. I hate this sort of dipshit politics on either side. When Harper was PM and the far left was apocalyptic about everything he did (doing the same incredibly stupid "everything is going to hell!" routine), it was just as profoundly stupid. I hate when both sides do this nonsense.
I’m not sure why you’re so eager to blame immigration for the economy doing poorly. Cutting immigration only makes the economy worse unless you offset that by creating growth elsewhere, which hasn’t seemed to happen in the last 10 years, nor the last ~350 days.
C-22 is not a tiny, minor thing. It has massive repercussions for people’s privacy and security, as well as for the economy. If it was some minor thing, why so much effort to push it through despite immense backlash? It’s clearly a top priority for the government for some reason.
The liberals were literally reelected on the basis that Mark Carney is a master economist and he is our only saviour against Trump.
>I’m not sure why you’re so eager to blame immigration for the economy doing poorly.
YOU complained about immigration. Immigration and housing allowed the government to basically ignore economic policies, productivity, and so on, for a lost decade. It allowed partisans (just like you) to declare that GDP went up so everything is great and nothing can be criticized, as Canadians got poorer and worse off. And yes, fixing a problem -- unsustainable, outrageously destructive mass immigration -- has consequences, but they're well worth it. YOU are the one who brought up per capita GDP.
>The liberals were literally reelected on the basis that Mark Carney is a master economist and he is our only saviour against Trump.
Eh, considering everything we're doing fantastic, and we're in a much better position for the next century. I hope that USMCA falls apart, personally, however much some small but extremely loud minority of my bootlicking, wanna-be-MAGA countrymen want to be a poor work colony of the US for eternity. Bowing to rapist bullying by a corrupt failing idiocracy is never a winning move.
Foreign investments just hit an 18 year high. Employment numbers just went positive (at about 5x the per capita rate of the US). The country is recovering nicely from being addicted to mass immigration/housing. Export markets are rapidly diversifying, and Canada has made a number of new strategic partnerships. Two straight months of growing trade surpluses.
All while our largest trading partner explicitly and openly tries to harm us.
And who gives a flying fuck about the Stanley cup. What a weird thing to cite.
You understand governments are large things with many departments and focuses, right? This "whataboutism" angle is always spectacularly boring horseshit, and usually is plied by partisans that just want to piss and moan about everything Not Their Team does.
This bill is deeply imperfect, and I hope it dies. Your comment is just noisy partisan bluster.
The comment you've replied to is clearly not "partisan bluster". While it may be a tad hyperbolic, with the Stanley Cup line, it's driving a valid point that while Canada is facing a number of very real challenges, the government in power is spending its time on internet censorship bills.
These bills are of almost no benefit to the average Canadian, and the point is that the government should focus more on things that matter to citizens. Instead of playing into people's fear and exposing them to potential government overreach, privacy violations, data breaches, etc., Canada's leadership should focus back on the economy.
Your comment actually seems to be the bluster, considering the ranting and swearing.
> while Canada is facing a number of very real challenges, the government in power is spending its time on internet censorship bills.
You could have said this at any point in the last ~15-20 years and it would apply. It's a problem certainly but not a new problem and has little to do with the current government nor current issues. They will try and try again until they succeed.
Instead of arguing over these semantics we should be focusing on a more permanent measure of preventing this garbage from getting inevitable shoved down our throats.
> And who gives a flying fuck about the Stanley cup. What a weird thing to cite.
If I was PM I would prioritise tax cuts to athletes playing for Canadian teams, repurpose the new Major Projects Office to be the Athletic Performance Office to provide funding and support to Canadian teams, and install a tax on Canadian players on American teams. I'm also joking, lighten up :P
I did misspeak about the foreign investments, what I was referring to is that we are seeing much more investments leaving the country than what are coming in, and of the investments in Canada, it's not just the sheer volume and direction that matters - foreign firms buying out Canadian businesses to later move them out of the country isn't a good thing long-term.
I have no doubt that Carney will be better for the economy than the last 10 years under Trudeau, and I hope they spend more time focusing on that then spending billions on useless gun buybacks, surveillance bills, banning social media, etc. We saw a sharp drop in entrepreneurship in Q1, hopefully they can do something to reverse that. I doubt it though.
This is basically just shilling. Average Canadians cannot point to many things that have improved or gotten cheaper in how many years? You are acting like we are a day away from being a debt free hyper economy that everyone is knocking on the door to get involved with.
Their comment was directly, overtly partisan. Further, it plies the rhetoric of a partisan -- literally, every talking point directly from conservative Canada-land -- and then does the cliche "whataboutism" that is a signature.
This whataboutism is a go-to because it's universally usable, and is the biggest tell that you're dealing with a partisan spouting worthless noise. Anything the government of the day does, whatabout this other things. It is spectacularly stupid, and is an immediate example that the speaker has nothing of value to add to anything, ever. It is one of the greatest cancers in Western democracies, and is exactly how malignancies take hold.
And the "Bounces off me" tactic is so boorish. I don't like this bill. I don't like a lot of the things this government has done. But the "OMG EVERYTHING HAS FALLEN TO SHIT" is so laughable.
I dunno, man, despite the problems I think Canada's a pretty great country. I'm glad that the government is capable of actually doing many things at once.
It's online and easy to read, and is a modernizing of laws around online systems. It is a deeply imperfect bill -- personally I think it is basically DOA and will not receive assent -- but a lot of the reaction to it are classic partisan hysterics (you can already see a bunch of those people throughout this discussion).
The parts that are garnering a lot of negative feedback is
1) requiring core providers (a list as yet undefined), and any others if specifically directed to, to maintain a rolling year of metadata that the government can request on a targeted individual with a warrant. This is obviously at odds with "no log" VPNs in particular. And let's be real: 99% of the industry already logs everything.
2) "the development, implementation, assessment, testing and maintenance of operational and technical capabilities, including capabilities related to extracting and organizing information that is authorized to be accessed and to providing access to such information to authorized persons;"
The #2 could potentially imply secondary decryption keys and the like, though the bill explicitly says the requirement cannot impose a systematic vulnerability, and the government has pointed to that and said they want no such thing.
So VPN providers are saying "we don't want to log", and encryption providers are saying "be much clearer in what you mean by systematic vulnerability. Define this explicitly".
That's not true. Most people are not legal experts with extensive expertise in technology, knowledge of how Canadian courts will interpret the legislation, and knowledge of how governments around the world are trying to attack encryption (ex: they do their best to hide and not to explicitly say it in the legislation).
> And let's be real: 99% of the industry already logs everything.
That's your opinion. That's not a real scientific claim, and yet you are using it to justify an unprecedented attack on privacy rights.
Suspicionless metadata retention has been illegal in the European Union since 2014, and it violates the Charter. There is no world in which it is acceptable.
The Canadian government can't compel companies, who have no hardware in Canada, to comply with Canadian law. Proton Mail has already made a statement that they will not comply with any foreign anti-privacy laws.
At most, Canada could force Canadian ISPs to block connections to known 'offenders' like Proton or other non-compliant VPNs. Then it's a cat and mouse game of using different and new VPNs to access to safe, non-compliant, services.
You could also rent a VPS in Europe to act as your own private tunnel but there's no telling if or when that would be blocked.
Why? Сountries pass laws, companies that don't comply are fined, shut down, blocked, and their owners are prosecuted and imprisoned. That is how it works already, nothing new or absurd here.
Well that's the crux of it and why some VPN providers have pushed back. If the law passed, and if those VPNs got added as core providers, they would either need to log the metadata or stop operating in Canada, and several have said they would stop operating in Canada.
There are arguments for all sides, and I do think the narrative gets monopolized by the hysterical. On the one side I like torrenting without concern, but on the other it would be nice if services didn't provide cover for people to send death threats, bomb threats to schools because they fly a pride flag, VoIP swatting, and so on. Though ultimately limiting just VPNs directly operating in Canada just offshores the problem so the solution doesn't really achieve anything.
Kristi "Dog Killer" Noem did a little act in the library where she jumped between the American and Canadian sides, saying "51st state" every time she went to the Canadian side. Which is unbelievably pathetic: When you have to deploy rape tactics to try to get someone to join you (while simultaneously trying to convince everyone how wonderful and great you are) -- something many in this administration are very accustomed to -- how completely busted and pathetic is your country?
This whole administration is just vile, and are long past the point where there should have been an uprising. Just an absolute idiocracy. A worldwide pariah, spiralling down the toilet.
Code has never been the bottleneck, and it was always an illusion that it was. I mean, programmers on the whole are a group that jerks around probably 95% of their time (this isn't an attack as I've spent my career as a software developer, and this included countless hours on Reddit, HN, Slashdot, and so on).
Australia already did. Commonwealth countries share a lot in common, and of course a lot of problems are common across many countries.
But let's be real -- these countries are announcing it in lockstep because the US is a corrupt plutocracy, and the lords of the nation like Mark Zuckerberg will run to Trump and he'll have a little tantrum (tantrums that always, it should be mentioned, just hurt Americans more. Everything is in the service of the billionaire class) about this.
It's tougher for that grifter to do so if so many countries do it simultaneously.
>The idea that this is about surveillance is also interesting.
What idea is that? That firms from foreign nations will gather IDs, of absolutely zero value for the country, to ensure age compliance? How does this silly conspiracy work?
Kids motivated will just get around it. But I think it's pretty clear at this point, given the idiocracies rising worldwide and how everything is getting stupider/worse, that social media has not been a net good.
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