CBC: Podcasts: Front Burner: New Canadian ‘centrist’ party accuses rivals of extremism
A new federal political party, the Canadian Future Party, is pitching itself as a centrist alternative for voters disillusioned with the Conservatives and Liberals.
It’s already announced candidates for two upcoming byelections.
Front Burner host Jayme Poisson spoke with the party’s interim leader, Dominic Cardy, about why he believes voters are so dissatisfied with the major parties, how he says there’s a “drive towards more and more extremism” among the Liberals and Conservatives, and why he thinks centrism can satisfy Canadians looking for change.
Ignore the terrible clickbaity title, and listen to the acting leader of the new party discuss why they exist, and what their policy directions are.
Slashdot: 110K Domains Targeted in ‘Sophisticated’ AWS Cloud Extortion Campaign
A sophisticated extortion campaign has targeted 110,000 domains by exploiting misconfigured AWS environment files, security firm Cyble reports. The attackers scanned for exposed .env files containing cloud access keys and other sensitive data. Organizations that failed to secure their AWS environments found their S3-stored data replaced with ransom notes.
The attackers used a series of API calls to verify data, enumerate IAM users, and locate S3 buckets. Though initial access lacked admin privileges, they created new IAM roles to escalate permissions. Cyble researchers noted the attackers' use of AWS Lambda functions for automated scanning operations.
Globe: Doug Ford calls supervised consumption sites ‘worst things’ to happen to communities
“We haven’t seen it get better. This was supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s the worst thing that could ever happen to a community, to have one of these safe-injection sites in their neighbourhood,” Mr. Ford said at an unrelated news conference about shipbuilding on Wednesday in St. Catharines, Ont.
“Dougma Ford” may not know the research results but he knows what he believes.
Globe: André Picard: Supervised drug consumption sites may have earned political and public wrath, but they are more helpful than harmful
Ten of the province’s 23 sites will close, and they won’t be allowed to reopen elsewhere. In other words, the proximity to schools/daycares business is just a ruse.
Ontario is also prohibiting municipalities and organizations from opening new sites, from participating in safer supply initiatives, or requesting decriminalization exemptions from the federal government.
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But as much as some measures may make us uncomfortable, harm reduction is effective. These sites have a very limited goal: To keep people alive a little longer in the hope they will seek treatment. They’re not a panacea.
Ending harm reduction measures like supervised consumption, access to safer supply, decriminalization of drug possession, and access to clean needles is not going to end the triple crisis that so many cities and towns are living through today. Homelessness, toxic drugs and untreated mental illness also exist in municipalities that don’t have supervised consumption sites, too.
Globe: Opinion: Misuse of the temporary foreign worker program is a business racket
This is not really shocking. The use, or misuse, of the temporary foreign worker program is not a Liberal or Conservative thing; as Brian Lilley wrote in the Toronto Sun last week, a land-surveying company owned by Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal hired “legal administrative assistants” through the program in 2023. Rather, it is a business thing, aided by whichever government is in power at the time.
In 2014, a guy named Justin Trudeau wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Star lamenting that under then-prime minister Stephen Harper, “the number of short-term foreign workers in Canada has more than doubled.” He prescribed that the program needed to be “scaled back dramatically over time, and refocused on its original purpose: to fill jobs on a limited basis when no Canadian workers can be found,” and that Canada should refocus on bringing in people with a permanent path to citizenship.
The primary effect of the program is to depress wages for unskilled workers. Great for businesses and self-interested consumers but not so great for society.
Vanity Fair: Donald Trump Has Jumped The Shark
The sense one gets listening to all this is of a man out of ideas, reaching into an old bag of tricks that aren’t as interesting as they used to be. This isn’t to say Democrats should get overconfident: There’s still a big market for what Trump is selling—and powerful interests, embodied by Musk, are seeking to propel him back to power. But the candidate appears capable only of doing the same things he’s done a million times before, except now much worse. He had hoped to regain his footing Monday night with Musk, who has become one of his most prominent backers. Instead, he underscored the personal “weirdness” Harris’s campaign has sought to highlight—and the extremism of his agenda, as seen in his praise of Musk firing striking workers, his vow to shutter the Department of Education, and his comments in support of climate change because, he said, global warming will mean “more oceanfront property.”
HowToGeek: A Windows Update is Breaking Dual-booting PCs
an error message that reads “Something has gone seriously wrong.” Microsoft has investigated the issue and released a statement.
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But according to Ars Technica, this update was installed on Windows devices dual-booting with new releases of Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and others. Booting from ISO files loaded on bootable drives is failing too.
CleanTechnica: Morrow Batteries Begins LFP Production In Norway
Morrow Batteries has begun pilot production of its LFP prismatic batteries at its new factory in Arendal in southern Norway. It expects that factory, which will have an annual capacity of 1 GWh, and be in full production by the end of this year. Three companion factories in Arendal are also planned. Jonas Gahr Støre, Prime Minister of Norway, was on hand to inaugurate the new factory, which is Europe’s first gigawatt-scale factory for LFP batteries.
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It will be interesting to see how things shake out with Northvolt, Morrow, and Varta, among others. Right now, CATL and BYD are leading the field and getting further ahead, thanks in part to massive encouragement from the Chinese government. It is uncertain whether the EU, Canada, and the United States are ready, willing, and able to match what China is doing to support the battery manufacturing sector.
Both battery technology and production are roaring ahead!
UPI: Report says 2023 set new records on heat, other climate-change factors
A new report released Thursday confirms that 2023 marked a string of new highs in climate change — from greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperatures, to a rise in sea and ocean levels, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The NOAA said the new figures come from the State of the Climate report, an international review of climate data that was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, involving scientists from 60 countries.
“This report documents and shares a startling but well-established picture: We are experiencing a warming world as I speak and the indicators and impacts are seen throughout the planet,” Derek Arndt, director of the National Centers for Environmental Information, said in a statement. “The report is another signpost to current and future generations.”
BBC: Starbucks new boss under fire for 1,000-mile commute
The newly-announced boss of Starbucks, Brian Niccol, has come under fire after it was revealed he will commute almost 1,000 miles (1,600km) from his family home in Newport Beach, California, to the firm’s headquarters in Seattle on a corporate jet.
Critics have noted what they see as a discrepancy between the company’s public stance on green issues and the lifestyles of its top executives.
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A report published by the United Nations in 2021 showed that the world’s wealthiest 1% of people produced double the combined carbon emissions of the poorest 50%.
Starbucks announced this month that Mr Niccol would be replacing Laxman Narasimhan as its chief executive.
The announcement came as the coffee chain looks to boost flagging sales.
This probably won’t help.
CBC: Imitation Inuit artifacts are everywhere, but a new treaty is trying to change that
A quick search for an ulu on Amazon, for example, brings up dozens of knives which claim to be the real thing.
One such knife that Bernice Kootoo Clarke, owner of Kuutuu Cultural Consulting, points out is from a company called Dalstrong.
The Toronto-based company markets them as “traditional Alaskan fish knives” manufactured in China, as stated on its website.
Last Updated: 22.Aug.2024 18:46 EDT
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