If you don’t mind clarifying, what do you mean by DoD?

Frankly the best solution i have seen is always a combination of things. At least in the city I live in, people can take bikes on buses and trains, many people walk, and for trips that require trunk space (e.g furniture, DIY supplies etc) there is a Car sharing service that is cheaper than owning a car, or using ride share / taxi.

I don’t think waymo is a better option than a combination of what’s above, I think it can perhaps compliment it but it should not be the sole last-kilometre solution.

I would like to see waymo-like tech provide better public transit for the disabled. As of now, people in my city with disabilities can book special routes which are serviced by specialized buses/ taxis, and existing lines are all wheelchair accessible as well.

Self driving cars give the opportunity for those people to have even more freedom in booking, since as of now they can’t do last minute booking for the custom routes. It wouldn’t really create a traffic problem and massively would increase quality of life for those who are sadly disadvantages in society

I’m pretty sure they still are a defence contractor in the US, they also are generally the option for biking computers. There are competitors but Garmin has a chokehold on that sector, with other options just feeling worse.

So while their smart watches are more niche than Apple, Samsung etc, they still have found a solid niche in the smart tracking sector.

I would also like to chime in regarding how the community is quite small, there are two (large-ish) Canadian instances but despite this there isn’t really a large francophone population here from what I’ve seen.

I think the western-anglo bias is in part because the community requires people to host the servers, for the community to even exist in the first place. Smaller regions (such as franco-canada, French speakers only making up ~24% of our population) will make up a smaller portion of the user base and likely found out about the App through other English-language resources.

Mastodon has a bit of a larger more diverse community, but it also has had the benefit of many more years of larger (but still niche) usage and arguably more severe issues with X formerly known as Twitter becoming a hell-hole.

Frankly I would like to not use Apple CarPlay / Android Auto — however, the built in software needs to actually usable and continuously updated.

I particularly want to see better non-touch input. Rotary dial + buttons à la Mazda, and much better voice input. I live in a multilingual region, and it consequently renders most in-built navigation voice commands useless, as it won’t understand language switching. Even Google assitant has issues with this despite supporting multiple input languages, usually resulting in me saying the entire command in the same language as the address. (Or just giving up if the name and street are in two languages).

But with built in systems that only support one language at a time, I just can’t say some of the addresses since I don’t know how it wants me to mispronounce them in English.

I also have found media playback frustrating in any modern vehicle. This is likely a lot harder to solve, but the inability to switch playlists or change playback settings without my phone connected to Android Auto is frustrating when in vehicles without it.

I know this is very ranty and not that big of a deal, it’s just frustrating seeing so little progress in the past decade on this front — and in some aspects like human interface design of vehicles, they have frankly regressed. If I look at the voice input systems on cars from 15-20 years ago there has been huge improvement, but even 10 years ago to now it doesn’t feel that different. Maybe a few new commands, but the quality of recognition / utility of the system is lacking.

I’m going to suggest an alternative to Samsung Internet or Firefox : https://github.com/uazo/cromite

Out of the options I’ve tried, it’s probably the best bet for reducing tracking, fingerprinting & increasing security without turning to Tor browser (which while it is more anonymous, is frustrating for general browsing)

For clearing cache, there are two options. There’s a dedicated clear browsing data button in the hamburger menu, it can also be configured to “sanitize on close” (similar to Firefox on desktop, or Brave on desktop / mobile) [In cromite, this can be found under Security > Clear the data at open]

I can’t recommend Firefox on Android in good faith, until site isolation (fission) is enabled on the platform. This is a major security regression compared to desktop Firefox, or chromium based browsers on Android

Edit: It seems like Iron Fox (continuation of Mull / fork of Firefox) has site isolation enabled - but it is still buggy and does not have all features enabled e.g no isolated process SELinux labels.

I hate to post another comment, but another great tool for media reading in general is RSS feed aggregators. Yes they can be janky, but it is the easiest way to explicitly choose what media you receive, rather than relying on algorithms in news apps / social media to dictate all that you read.

NetNewsWire is a great option for Apple devices Feedbro integrates into your web browser And Feeder is the one I use on my Android phone.

Here is a general comparison list on Wikipedia of different feed aggregators.

If you are a bit more technically inclined, I highly recommend hosting your own feed aggregator online (allowing you to sync your saved articles / read articles between devices, and better battery life on mobile devices). The two apps I usually see recommended for this are tt-rss “Tiny Tiny RSS” as well as FreshRSS.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thien was a great read. It was shortlisted for the Booker prize, won the Governor General’s award and won the Giller prize that year.

I also can highly recommend Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, which was a finalist for CBCs “Canada Reads”.

Overall I’d highly recommend looking at the GG and Giller for authors, as well as CBCs “Canada Reads”. For Canada Reads, we also have the shortlisted books for this year’s edition already!

That is a really fascinating blog post! Thank you for sharing it :)

As with any map app, when the app is in the foreground it uses location data to position you on the map. Most of the transit authorities also have public APIs for locating their vehicles which the app uses in conjunction with user location data to provide more accurate transit arrival time (and inherently is how they can know if you’re taking transit)

They do state in their privacy policy that location data isn’t linked to your personal information, nor is it sold to third parties. Their model solely relies on user / transit authority subscriptions. Of course, this still requires you to trust their data processing, but I feel like they adequately provide useful transit features with said location data.

Edit: I should also add you don’t need to make an account, in which case location data cannot be tied to any personal user data and you are still admissible for the free subscription offered by select transit authorities.

I am not entirely sure, for me there’s an option to email them if I believe I am admissible and haven’t been added. I don’t take transit enough to be admissible however, I usually just walk. I will have to ask some of my friends who have it if it was a fully automatic process for them or if it was manual (in my case, OC Transpo / STO)

Edit: I just opened the app to check and I am now a Royale member, so it is automatic. I take transit only once a week I’d say.

I’m saying this as a coffee fanatic myself, you don’t need to be educated on what is “good or bad”, what matters is what you like :)

I haven’t tried Muskoka myself but I’ll likely give it a shot at some point!

Some other Canadian ones I like are Hatch (out of Markham) and Equator (near Ottawa)

If you’re francophone (or just a francophile) I highly recommend La Presse and Le Devoir. The former is a non-profit and considered a “newspaper of record”, the latter isn’t non-profit but is still an independent publication and is also often considered a newspaper of record.

And of course there’s Radio-Canada, the French language publication of the CBC.

The French avoid list for me mostly revolves around Québecor — but this is more of a journalistic integrity issue rather than an American media problem. I find it important from a moral and ethical perspective to avoid media megacorp conglomerates (and this is also yet another reason to avoid Postmedia).

One more thing on franco media, reading the news is a great way of developing vocabulary in your second language. Give it a shot, it’s really fulfilling and in this case unlocks some great independent / non-profit options :)

I agree with the other comment – buy from other retailers.

In a pinch however, usually you can find the same thing that people sell on Amazon, cheaper, from AliExpress. I’d personally avoid them when you can, but sometimes they are the only option for getting obscure parts etc.

For ebooks, you can go to Kobo (Canadian company, owned by the Japanese company Rakuten) OR you can borrow them from your local library (they can be synced to your phone or kobo ereader). Otherwise support a local new or used bookstore!

Spotify, Dezeer, SoundCloud and Quobuz are all European alternatives to Amazon Music (and Apple Music for that matter)

I haven’t fact checked it myself, but I have seen a few people comment that the Shopify CEO believes Canada needs it’s own equivalent to America’s DOGE.

Which I feel is reason enough for someone to boycott them as well “by proxy”.

Quel est ton avis sur les médias franco-canadiens en termes de livres, de films et de séries? J’ai suffisamment de journaux canadiens francophones, mais j’ai eu plus de mal à trouver d’autres médias de qualité, même avec des amis franco 🫠

I don’t think denying American platforms / content creators their money is a real solution, the american content being an integral part of Anglo-Canadian culture is the real issue at hand.

I mean we do have can-con regulations, but arguably their implementation is lacking and at least for the film industry seemingly supports foreign films filming in Canada more than it supports domestic films.

There also even is a whole question of what even constitutes Canadian content, should we only include things that are substantially about Canada or Canadians? Or is it enough for it to be made in Canada / by Canadians.

I also know at least for some sectors it’s even harder than others. E.g anglo Canadian drama / théâtre is always going to have issues because we have grants for domestic non-profit grassroots productions, but the big anglo-theatre houses are expensive enough that it’s mostly going to be American stuff coming :/

It’s disheartening but I don’t see an easy solution, but I do hope we at least try to make steps in the right direction in the coming years.

You have a few options on what you can do to limit your child’s usage of a device.

NextDNS has some interesting features for parental controls, as well as some options to try and prevent bypassing it (i have yet to try it though). On iOS it can be installed as a device profile and you can prevent them from being uninstalled, I’m not sure how to go about this on android but I’m sure there’s a way of limiting the child’s access to changing the settings.

Otherwise the built in parental control features on Android and iOS seem to be very useful as well, since you can limit what your child can install, set screen time limits, etc. I am pretty sure you’d want a more recent version of Android however to get all of the features here which may not be possible depending on the budget.

If you just want the ability to call / text then perhaps a dumb phone is a good first step? But a smart phone may be more useful if they’re older.

I mostly play rogue likes with controller and would like a XBox/Playstation style controller

I’m assuming you dont need gyro or touchpad that you’ll get with PlayStation / Nintendo compatible controllers, however if you do want those features the Switch Pro controller & the DualSense (PS5) play nicely on my Linux computer (with steam)

Out of the two I’d probably recommend the dual sense since you’re used to Xbox / Western PS layout rather then Nintendo / Japanese PS layout.

I’ve heard good things about the 8bitdo controllers, but can’t comment on their compatibility or quality. The contemporary xbox wireless controllers I don’t personally like, the current ones have this extra grippy texture on the back and thumbsticks that doesn’t sit well with me and the lack of rechargeability ootb is disappointing for the price.