To add to this: pharmacists are able to prescribe medication of certain classes, for certain conditions, depending on the province. Here is a list with more details for anyone interested:

English: https://www.pharmacists.ca/cpha-ca/assets/File/pharmacy-in-canada/PharmacistPrescribingAuthority_EN_web.pdf

French: https://www.pharmacists.ca/cpha-ca/assets/File/pharmacy-in-canada/PharmacistPrescribingAuthority_FR_web.pdf

Celebrities, AI, Reddit, lemmy - a short and incomplete list of places to not take medical advice or diagnose from. Doctors have doctorates in their field of expertise for a reason. If I want to complain about my achy joints here, I will. But I sure as hell won’t trust my personal health decisions to somebody without proof of competence.

Nvidia will prioritize AI and more than likely know when to bail before the bubble bursts. They will have made boatloads for shareholders while leaving so many others in financial ruin. Whether those caught in the bubble burst should have known better… I guess it’s a case by case basis.

I am in support of helping Canadian businesses, especially in the current political climate. What I am not so confident in is the willingness of food suppliers to pass savings along all the way to the customer. Grocery stores have used inflation and price fixing tactics here for far too long for them to have earned my trust. Grocery stores must be seriously audited and regulated accordingly. By all means, make a profit - no brainer. But your profits now are bolstered by hurting 99% of Canadians who need food to survive.

Try a locally operated pharmacy or another option in your area if possible. Shoppers is hit and miss in my experience (majority misses).

Costco has a $5 prescribing fee and doesn’t require a membership for pharmacy. If you have a pharmacy close to a Costco you can try asking them to price match the Costco dispensing fee. It usually works, and then you can support a local pharmacy instead of Costco. If you like the pharmacy and have the funds in the future, you’re always free to pay the original dispensing fee as a show of support - I just mention this as an option, not suggesting anyone must.

Part of what ruins games for me are the massive publishers behind them. EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar.

The games may be great. The developers may be great. The studios (by and large) interfere in the process of development, the monetization, the end-of-life plan…

For me, when I have the chance to play games, I’ve found myself opting for smaller studios or indie games.

Also I want to shout out Ross Scott of Accursed Farms. He covers so many cool and obscure games. He has worked incredibly hard towards enacting pro-consumer business practices in the gaming world. He’s a very smart and pragmatic guy. I would highly recommend anyone who’s into gaming to check out his site and content.

To me, he’s been an inspiration in his uphill battle of the Stop Killing Games initiative. He’s been working through the apathy, the negativity, the doubt. It’s actually incredible what he’s achieved. A man with passion and a plan, who happens to also make some damn good game related videos.

Ok I realize this just turned into a love letter for Ross Scott. I’m okay with that.

Self-hosted is a great way to go for those who can afford the initial cost and can get the setup done. I’d love to see more of it but I also know that most people won’t do that, and I get it because if I asked my mom to self-host right now I think her brain would explode.

Second best we can do is start using and promoting alternatives. Us nerds tend to be some of the earlier adopters. If enough users flock to the right platform, and if the platform is easy for non-nerds to sign up, then the shift may happen. Now is a climate where the desire for change is higher than normal.

No company is too big to dominate the landscape, the momentum and desire just needs to grow. And we should be careful of jumping from one pirate ship to another pirate ship. TikTok to Reels, Twitter/X to Threads, these are not the kind of changes we need to encourage.

But I’m not one for social media overall, so I can’t do much except inform my family and friends in a way that doesn’t drive them crazy. To anyone reading: don’t be that guy either, because if you pester too hard you’re likely to breed resentment and cause people to become further entrenched in their current habits.

Voting by platform and re-evaluating based on results is much better than voting by party. Hell, like so may others I was ready to vote for a conservative leader after the Trudeau era. But Carney struck me as a competent and well spoken progressive conservative in Liberal clothing. So I voted Liberal again!

PP surviving this may be good for the current government in the sense that people want to stay the hell away from him (I totally get that). But post-Davos PP actually gave a level-headed response to Carney’s speech - saying that it was a good speech but needs actions to follow. I don’t disagree with PP on that, I mean, anybody who voted for Carney will also agree, because it’s kind of a no-duh statement.

So, PP remains. Ok. I hope that he can see the way the winds are shifting and drop the Maple Maga talking points and work with the current government meaningfully.

You know, it’s all so new, the world is moving so fast, we can only wait and see how the dynamics play out. Carney has shown willingness to draw in provincial premiers together and even change some minds (like Ontario’s Ford with automotive). Maybe, just maybe, Carney can get PP to consider constructive dialogue, and that if there is an issue the current Conservative Party is passionate about, we can work with them to understand their position and try to find a solution that works across the board - and very importantly - in a way that represents the general majority’s interests.

I’d like to see leaders making their positions known, pushing for them when they’re substantive, but also making concessions if they make sense. We’re at a point where we need to take as much unity across the aisle as we can get.

And everyone, don’t forget to look into your provincial elections and your provincial policies too! Our system places a lot of power in provincial leaders, they are equally important as federal elections for domestic issues!

When it comes to LLM AI usage, there’s definitely a few things you can consider.

I’ll reference OpenAI as you mentioned but it can apply to others as well to varying degrees

First is that the OpenAI has the goal of making a profit, but the market is getting more saturated, the costs to run data centres increases with model complexity and user base increases.

Funding is being pumped into them by investors, government in the US and other non-AI companies are banking on AI to bolster the economy and profits respectively. For things like ChatGPT they offer paid plans for consumers but this is a small fraction of their revenue.

The stats show they are losing money quickly. Investors want profits, the company wants dominance, the government seems to be approaching it from a “too big to fail approach”.

So we’re slowly seeing shifts; in the US, ads are being experimented with in ChatGPT, models are being chosen that use less tokens and less computing power, etc.

There have also been studies showing the diminishing returns of the thinking that “a bigger model is better”.

There’s also the question of how much they care about correct answers. They are surely aware that most don’t understand how an LLM AI works, that most will not do much research to fact-check answers, that most will consider convenience to be king.

Their token system is a huge balancing act and I’m not fully convinced they know what works and what doesn’t.

AI is being propped up, it shows signs of a bubble. Not to say AI is going anywhere, but when the pop inevitably happens, the LLM AI landscape will leave behind a lot of failure and monetary loss, and a few winners. Think dot com bubble for reference but in a whole new era of computing.

The circular economy going on and the investment from private and US government entities can only keep this train on the tracks for so long.

If I were to subjectively answer your question in a phrase: I don’t think they really do care too much at the moment.

Data sovereignty and social media sovereignty is something I’d love to see worked on more. I mean, the shift is already happening to a larger degree as you know if you’re reading this comment.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the average Joe needs to consider these things - or maybe it’s a wake up call to our relative complacency over the past decades?

I prefer to keep my data outside of the US. Canada for some, specific EU countries for others. But bills like Chat Control are even threatening other nations’ long-standing privacy norms. The burn-out will be real for some, those who didn’t care may not until it directly affects them. Others will hopefully find a balance they believe suits them.

The floor is lava! Have to keep jumping around!

Setting aside the main discussion for a moment (I think it’s been covered thoroughly by now), just a friendly reminder to diversify news sources and read past the title.

I think, we’re in a Canadian space, outside of the de-facto mainstream social media platform and further delegated to a Canada-centric platform. I really do think that we’re all going to benefit if we take this explosion in popularity here to make sure we better ourselves online at the same time. I have been guilty of it, so many of us have.

It’s easy to get caught in the negative news cycle, and even knee-jerk reactions from the headlines. But Trump is not our president and he never will be. Our helm is navigating the rough waters. Take solace in the captain’s fortitude and give him time to weather the storm. Unless the ship starts to sink, we’re all better doing what we can to make this ride as bearable as possible.

I am not saying outrage is invalid. Every Canadian has the right to feel strongly about what’s going on. But, let’s not play the game too much when we know the game is rigged. The house always wins, unless we realize that we don’t have to play against the house.

Much love from Canada.

The blatant disregard or lack of training on the Jay treaty needs to be fixed. These people have the legal right to both travel and work freely. This is something that isn’t even up for debate.

Unfortunately, treaties and the like are only as good as the good faith effort to both enforce them and understand them.

It’s one of many cogs in the machine that are breaking down right now. We have lots of things to address in the current political climate, of course, but this is one more thing that we’re going to need to add to the list of cog mending…

Microsoft has really messed up quite spectacularly. 5 years ago I would never have even considered switching to another OS (especially for a daily driver).

Yet here I am, using LINUX! My experience with Linux has gone from the perception of it as a scary figure, a ghost looming around me that I was trying to ignore. But now, I’m realizing that Linux is more like Casper. Linux is a friendly ghost. So while I still may not know how to totally deal with cohabitating with a ghost, at least it’s friendly, in theory.

But in less obtuse terms: my experience with Linux has definitely had it’s terminal moments and learning to de-Windowsify my tasking, but it’s come to the point where the cons of Windows make it a non-starter.

Maybe it’s not the year of the Linux desktop, but the years of the Linux desktop. Reaching a wider audience and finding a way to make choosing a distro is going to be a task.

I will say that while I’ve never bought one of their systems, System76 is a company I regularly check up on because I think it’s very cool that they’re PC building from the ground up with Linux (and their own Linux distro as well). It’s a trend in the right direction, at least.