AtkinsRéalis (known as SNC-Lavalin at the time) is a Canadian construction company that was at the centre of a huge scandal in Canada. They were caught bribing the son of Libian dictator Gaddafi to get a contract to build a prison, allegedly for political prisoners.

While the Justice Minister was having this company prosecuted, the Prime Minister (Justin Trudeau) demanded that she give AtkinsRéalis a slap on the wrist and a deferred prosecution agreement. When she refused, she was driven from her position.

Canada’s government has a history of propping up bad actors like this, and goes out of their way to support several oligopolies that run significant chunks of the Canadian market. Bell/Rogers/Telus own most of Canada’s mobile and internet offerings, Loblaws/Sobeys/Metro own most of Canada’s grocery stores, much of Canada’s produce and meat are controlled by cartels, etc… The maple syrup cartel is very powerful and wealthy and yes you’re reading that right, there is a maple syrup cartel and even a maple syrup black market.

One special mention goes out to the Canadian Real Estate industry, which is full of actual crooks all over the place and just disgusting. Did you know in Canada it is legal for a real estate agent to represent both sides of a purchase? Agents also will refuse to work with any of the bargain agencies that charge less than the standard 2.5% commission, basically locking them out of the industry. This crap is part of why housing prices have bubbled so hard, and together with price fixing by landlords they have managed to keep Canadian housing prices at levels so stupid homelessness has increased several times over.

Canadian people are often too fixated on not being seen to be a problem, what some call “politeness”, to the point they won’t even stand up for themselves. That unwillingness to protest or try to change things has allowed this to happen for a very long time. Because of this awful “politeness” many Canadians are even cheering on new laws limiting union action.

tl;dr Canada is a banana republic and Canadians are cucked

Seeing some of those idiots even in the comments on fucking Lemmy of all places is crazy.

I’m pretty over the whole “4chan dystopian joke becomes real life” thing. Corpo dickheads, you can stop now.

It was already happening. Plenty of people were insulting those complaining about the cost of living, saying things like “What do you mean? The economy is doing fine.” In Canada the finance minister called it a “vibecession”, implying it was all in our heads.

All these people are talking about asset prices while we talk about the cost of living.

I keep critical applications running at work that thousands depend on. While I was at a union convention, one of my apps broke. I had to login that day and fix it while going over the budget with other members.

This is how the IT world is. I’m the only person capable of maintaining it and I must be available if things go wrong. The show must go on.

I live in one of the more humid areas of Canada and when people tell you it can’t get humid when it’s that cold I wonder if they’ve ever experienced how the cold can just cut right through your clothes.

Summer humidity is absolutely the worst though, and people die here every year because of it.

Quick Celsius breakdown from a Canadian:

• 40+ - most Canadians stop eating food and hope for a quick death
• 35 - you might just be able to live with this if you do nothing at all
• 28 - right about the place where comfort gives way to a general sense of warmth, something that makes any Canadian uncomfortable
• 23 - room temperature, and why “room temperature IQ” is an insult only Americans could have come up with because their scale was made by a madman
• 15 - If it’s Autumn you are wearing a light jacket, if it’s Spring you are sweating
• 5 - sweater time
• 0 to -10 - that stereotypical TV winter experience, where everyone is skating and sipping hot chocolate? Yeah that’s like half the year here. You better like hot chocolate.
• -15 - We enjoy the fresh air, others will probably find it painful to breathe directly; put on a scarf! Do not brush your teeth immediately before going outside unless you want to experience mint-flavoured pain.
• -20 - Canadians put their boots on by now. Exposed skin on a windy day can get frostbite in as little as 10 minutes.
• -30 - We will debate putting a coat on to put the garbage out at this temperature, usually erring on the side of caution in case your kids lock you outside again. Seriously invest in good winter gear for this, this temperature can kill surprisingly fast and it only gets increasingly unpleasant from here.
• -40 - turns out you can’t form snowballs in hell because the snow is too crispy

In countries like India and China where women are less free to choose quality of life and human connections over money, a lot more of them go into IT.

I got asked by a team of first timers who have never done any professional coding or design if I wanted to chip in on a competitive MMOFPS they want to make.

That’s not going to happen. Between the rise of cheating, the insane hardware and optimization requirements of an MMOFPS, the general lack of interest in the genre (most have died due to low player counts), and the sheer amount of time and effort involved in designing and balancing the game even after it’s largely feature complete? Forget it, I’m better off buying lottery tickets than hoping for anything to come of that.

In an ideal world we’d all be encouraged to take on creative pursuits and have the ability to do so, rather than feel guilty for them. Maybe someday, right?

Stopped myself before I got in as far as you but realized my roadblock is art. I can’t solve this one: I lack the creativity and patience to do the art, and naturally nobody will ever work for free, nor should they.

I wasn’t really sure how to proceed so I started studying for various tech and cloud certs instead. Might as well put my skills to use somewhere.

Make sure to add mandatory EGS accounts later.

Fuck em, send them 24h times and let them figure it out.

Audiophile equipment is just magic crystal bullshit for pseudointellectuals.

more like SQLCrusader

I urge everyone to install Adnauseum. You know what’s better than trying to starve advertisers of info? Filling their ad profile for you with total garbage.