Ownership remains the key advantage. Unlike earlier telecom providers that leased infrastructure or delivered service wirelessly, WJBTN owns the backbone fiber, the right-of-way, and the poles carrying the network. That makes it far harder for outside telecom companies to displace the service...
Fundamentally, it’s about sovereignty. By controlling the infrastructure that carries internet traffic, the communities can govern and maintain the network according to their own priorities rather than the financial goals of distant providers.
This is huge, what an incredible advantage to hold in a tech world that's so consistently enshittifying. I'm so stoked for them.
Then, in a turn of events that rocked the communities, lead engineer Dirk MacLeod had a heart attack and died in July 2019. “My chest was ripped open,” Nakogee says. The grieving company shut down for the summer.
After MacLeod’s death, one line worker quietly took it upon himself to finish extending fiber to distribution points in Fort Albany
Their resilience in the wake of this is outstanding too. A passion-project like this might have easily gone to the vultures, if not for the way northern communities rally.
I no longer think ill of hackers that don't even try to responsibly disclose vulnerabilities any more. The glory days of bug bounties, or even easily getting in contact with a human being who cares, are long past.
It would be nice if there at least existed a non-profit organisation that accepts vulnerability "donations", who are well versed in jumping through the hoops, and who would be taken more seriously than the average anon, with the promise that any bug bounties go to a worthy charity.
I don't see a program like that taking off now though, unless an existing org like CVE were to set it up.
It breaks my heart to see American conservative toxicity rubbing off on Canada more and more as I age.
It feels like all I can do is warn my kids against the propaganda they'll face growing up, and hope things reverse course as Canadians become increasingly disenfranchised with the government to the south.
Yes, so for example if you go to https://archive.org/details/ipoy143season5, you can download in a few formats, and if you search within the site there are features to facilitate downloading many episodes in bulk.
Archive.org has most of them available. I'm on a quest to get every episode, but I'm missing 4. Everywhere I find them, it's the same problem - the missing episodes are mislabeled duplicates of another episode.
Only half joking - look for estate sales in your area, old folks are leaving behind all kinds of magnificent things that their children don't care about.
Probably mostly quaint things, though. The stuff on that site is rad as hell.
In any previous era, the quality of a piece of work was a more or less reliable signal of the competence of the person who produced it. A novice essay read like a novice essay; novice code crashed in novice ways. AI has severed that relationship.
The skills of producing work and judging it were deliberately distinct, but accomplishing the work itself used to teach the judgment. The first skill now belongs, in large part, to the machines. The second still belongs to us, though fewer are bothering to acquire or utilize it.
The slowness was not a tax on the real work; the slowness was the real work. It was how the work got good, and how the people producing the work got good
The current generation of agentic systems is built around the premise that the human is the bottleneck — that the loop runs faster and cleaner without the awkward delay of someone reading what is about to happen and deciding whether it should. This is, in a great many cases, exactly backwards
I get what you're saying. To me, this reads like someone who takes pride in forming assumptions (and biases) about a team before speaking to any of its members. A fun game for them, perhaps, but less fun for the folks they are trying to pigeonhole.
I guess there's a fine line between collecting information to have a productive, data-driven conversation, and doing it to avoid having a conversation entirely.
Also seems like they're more interested in connecting with the boss than the developers themselves, which is probably something you need to do as a contractor, but yeah, it does alienate other developers.
Some tricks I've used in the past when huge sets of episodes are scrambled or misnamed and you need to start from square one matching them:
Check if the files have any embedded metadata with the episode name or number using a tool like MediaInfo
If the episodes have different runtimes, you can try to match them to runtimes listed on a well-labeled list of episodes, like on Wikipedia or in a torrent.
Download a tool to auto-generate subtitles from the audio track. Probably won't be accurate, but should give you enough of the dialogue to now search online and see what episode it is.
If the show has a splash screen with the episode name at a fixed time, like many kids shows, you can auto-generate thumbnails at that time for all episodes
Last resort: Manually watch enough of each episode to match it to the right episode synopsis on e.g. wikipedia and then label it appropriately
Pirate option: Pretend you ripped it yourself and download a properly-curated set
Huh, I'm the opposite of everyone else in this thread. I grew up in Ottawa and have only ever gone east, never been west of Niagara Falls. I've driven to Halifax or Cape Breton Island and back maybe 50 times in my life. 14 to 16 hours each way.
I've always enjoyed the drives. Every rest stop or gas station along the way has always been full of mostly friendly people. I like to stop in Quebec for Poutine and/or cheese curds at least once per trip.
The scenery is glorious east of Montreal, pretty much the whole way to the coast. The scenery used to be nicer, at the expense of scarier roads 15 years ago. Now they have nice new divided 2-lane highways almost all the way to Cape Breton, so it's a much easier drive, but less "quaint" (fewer farms passed by / towns passed through).
It's not a nice drive when it's snowing. Some areas of highway are very susceptible to snow drifts.
This is huge, what an incredible advantage to hold in a tech world that's so consistently enshittifying. I'm so stoked for them.
Their resilience in the wake of this is outstanding too. A passion-project like this might have easily gone to the vultures, if not for the way northern communities rally.
I for one can't browse the steam store without the steamdb plugin anymore, since it shows not only the current sale price, but the price history.
This will pair nicely with that.
If anyone wants an entire TV show done like this, check out Wellington Paranormal
I no longer think ill of hackers that don't even try to responsibly disclose vulnerabilities any more. The glory days of bug bounties, or even easily getting in contact with a human being who cares, are long past.
It would be nice if there at least existed a non-profit organisation that accepts vulnerability "donations", who are well versed in jumping through the hoops, and who would be taken more seriously than the average anon, with the promise that any bug bounties go to a worthy charity.
I don't see a program like that taking off now though, unless an existing org like CVE were to set it up.
If it makes you feel any better, Plex could never handle this either.
Upvote for LosslessCut. Wish I could upvote again for the pun.
It breaks my heart to see American conservative toxicity rubbing off on Canada more and more as I age.
It feels like all I can do is warn my kids against the propaganda they'll face growing up, and hope things reverse course as Canadians become increasingly disenfranchised with the government to the south.
Yes, so for example if you go to https://archive.org/details/ipoy143season5, you can download in a few formats, and if you search within the site there are features to facilitate downloading many episodes in bulk.
Archive.org has most of them available. I'm on a quest to get every episode, but I'm missing 4. Everywhere I find them, it's the same problem - the missing episodes are mislabeled duplicates of another episode.
Only half joking - look for estate sales in your area, old folks are leaving behind all kinds of magnificent things that their children don't care about.
Probably mostly quaint things, though. The stuff on that site is rad as hell.
Some quotes that resonated with me:
We tried training our AI on real-world bike-lane-respecting telemetry, but there just wasn't enough data!
Downvote and move on. I'm trying to figure out why so many people are actively campaigning against this artist.
I get what you're saying. To me, this reads like someone who takes pride in forming assumptions (and biases) about a team before speaking to any of its members. A fun game for them, perhaps, but less fun for the folks they are trying to pigeonhole.
I guess there's a fine line between collecting information to have a productive, data-driven conversation, and doing it to avoid having a conversation entirely.
Also seems like they're more interested in connecting with the boss than the developers themselves, which is probably something you need to do as a contractor, but yeah, it does alienate other developers.
Some tricks I've used in the past when huge sets of episodes are scrambled or misnamed and you need to start from square one matching them:
I came to make sure grandson was mentioned. Their Soundcloud tagline is something like "the soundtrack to your revolution".
Huh, I'm the opposite of everyone else in this thread. I grew up in Ottawa and have only ever gone east, never been west of Niagara Falls. I've driven to Halifax or Cape Breton Island and back maybe 50 times in my life. 14 to 16 hours each way.
I've always enjoyed the drives. Every rest stop or gas station along the way has always been full of mostly friendly people. I like to stop in Quebec for Poutine and/or cheese curds at least once per trip.
The scenery is glorious east of Montreal, pretty much the whole way to the coast. The scenery used to be nicer, at the expense of scarier roads 15 years ago. Now they have nice new divided 2-lane highways almost all the way to Cape Breton, so it's a much easier drive, but less "quaint" (fewer farms passed by / towns passed through).
It's not a nice drive when it's snowing. Some areas of highway are very susceptible to snow drifts.
My favourite section might be the cobequid pass.
No social life here, just trying to give my weekends to my kids. Trying not to ruin their present with my constant worrying about their future.
Seems like it's actually gone bad :(