David K

I sent this message to everyone at Ardan this morning. Good Morning everyone. I want to share this and share some thoughts for all of you to consider for this year. We all need to come to recognize that if your job is to just write code, you will be out of a job in the next year or two. The AI coding agents have reached a level of being very good at writing the code you ask it to write. Notice I said "ask it to write." I need everyone to start focusing on their engineering skills: - Being able to identify what needs to be built and why. - Breaking that down into chunks of work and that be verified and tested. - Knowing how to ask for the code you need written and when you need it. - Maintaining a mental model of what is being built and coded. - Code reviews by yourself and the AI coding agents. This requires you to have a strong foundation in project structure and architecture. Everything I teach in my Software Design class. Without strong project structure, architecture, and design philosophy, these projects will be a mess. Really no different from what happens today without the AI Coding agent. You just get to the mess faster. So now is the time to strengthen these skills and leverage the videos I have. Leverage my existence here and reach out and ask questions. This year you MUST improve these engineering skills to stay employed. You must find an AI coding agent you like and start using it. You must invest in that tooling just like you invest in your laptop. Sourcegraph AMP I think is the best backend dev tooling out there. They have a free version with ads that don't get in your way. This is just 1 of many tools. Try and few and pick one. If you watch my live coding show (especially the last 2 shows) you can see how I use AMP effectively. Some of you can't use this tooling with your clients. But they do have internal models that some tools can use. Push to get access and start using it. Ask your clients what the rules are for using these tools and start using them. Please reach out if you need help getting started or have questions. -- Bill

I said yesterday it's not obvious to me that TradFi institutions will choose "the most decentralized L1" as they move their businesses onchain. A common response was "then why not use AWS/SQL." This is cute, but it wrongly casts decentralization as a binary rather than a spectrum. Public blockchains have many advantages over traditional databases: they are more accessible, interoperable, reliable, secure, etc. But many of these advantages require only sufficient decentralization — not maximum decentralization. Yes, if a chain depends on a single data center, it won't be nearly as reliable (it won't have as good uptime) as a decentralized chain. It also won't be as resilient to risks like censorship, deplatforming, security exploits, etc. More decentralization is better in many ways. But more decentralization is generally more expensive, practically by design. Some users will spare no expense to get the most benefit possible. If you're a dissident opposing an authoritarian regime who needs to secure your personal wealth, you should be willing to pay for maximum decentralization. There are many such cases. My point is that TradFi institutions offering centralized onchain products are not such cases. TradFi institutions aren't looking to spend extra or wait extra minutes on every transaction day-in and day-out to get more security against nation-state-level attacks. If something goes really wrong onchain, the risk to the TradFi institution isn't "the whole business fails," it's "we have to process the transaction using an alternate method" or "we have to decommission and reissue a stolen asset" or some other cost that may not outweigh using a more expensive chain. TradFi institutions also don’t care about the core property that decentralized public blockchains uniquely enable — self-sovereign ownership of digital assets. When the blockchain itself is the sole source of truth regarding who owns what, maximum decentralization is paramount. But TradFi institutions offering centralized products aren’t using chains for that purpose, since they rely on offchain legal systems to determine ownership. For these users, sufficient decentralization is the right tradeoff — just enough to get the benefits of a public blockchain on any given day, but no more expensive than necessary in cost and speed. Arguing that TradFi institutions will choose "the most decentralized L1" puts ideology over practicality, something the vast majority of for-profit businesses will not do. Two notes: (1) Many people took this as a criticism of Ethereum, and, well, sort of! But the best counterargument is also Ethereum's own L2 roadmap, which (if it works) offers an appealing tradeoff for TradFi institutions of low cost and high speed with an escape hatch in case of crisis. I think there's a good shot that institutions decide to offer centralized products on ETH L2s. The challenge for competing chains looking to win this business is to have more attractive infrastructure, liquidity, developer interest, interoperable products, exclusive offerings, regulatory moats, etc. — which explains why you see them acting the way they are now. (2) Maximum decentralization is much more important for developers of crypto-native protocols. The TradFi institution offering the centralized product onchain typically retains the ability to resolve issues offchain, since their customers expect (and regulations often require) them to act as trusted third parties who keep their products working as expected. In that case, the risk of using an insecure chain is lower; the product survives even if the chain fails. But the crypto-native protocol has risk commensurate with the chain; since the protocol depends on the chain as the sole source of truth, if the chain fails, the protocol (and products built on it) fail too. This explains why you see so many developers continuing to build on Ethereum, despite all the turbulence in the ecosystem over the last year.

Temporary foreign workers are just WAGE SUPPRESSION the libertarian right will say you are the "woke right" for not allowing borderless labour but what they fail to account for IS THE INDUCEMENT FOR TAKING A LOWER WAGE IS CITIZENSHIP HIGHER PROFITS AT TAXPAYER'S EXPENSE!

NOWHERE TO HIDE Government paper is going no-bid. Your mortgage is fucked. Governments are fucked.

Annual budgets are no longer required, it seems. Which is probably just as well, since a) no one can make any sense of budgets any more, so violently have finance ministers tortured the presentation of the numbers, b) budget forecasts are almost instantly obsolete, especially with regard to spending, revised upward to the tune of tens of billions within six months, c) budgets are supposed to provide context for analyzing the more detailed figures in the estimates, but no longer serve even that function since they generally come in after the estimates, and in any case are on a different accounting system, d) budgets are less and less about the budget and more and more serve as a platform for ramming through every other item on the government's agenda.

Under @JustinTrudeau's watch, Canada's been on a spending spree abroad that would make even the most ethical and honest of souls considering whether to gas and dash, or not. Canada's liberals are squandering our cash like there's no tomorrow. As citizens, we need to put some DOGE pressure on our government to ditch the waste. I'm going to post a link below where we can see the international inefficiencies and waste we are funding, by the billions for such madness as gender focus women initiatives in the Congo, billions to Ukraine, millions to China and many points in the middle east by way of Hamas-Staffed UNRWA. This MUST end! We're stuck with woke leaders If we stopped wasteful international spending Canada could meet its NATO obligations, but we cannot do both. Take a l👀k at the Global Affairs Canada Project Browser, and prepare to be gobsmacked by some of these expenditures. I'll post the link to the site below, but brace yourself, you might need help picking your jaw up from the floor: Here are some of the bewildering projects I found, each one a testament to Trudeau's penchant for "Trudeau-nomics", and I will provide each example with a bit of context: -Support to the National Institute of Statistics (Understanding) in Guatemala - Project number CA-3-A032311001, a cool CA$15.7 million. This project aims to improve statistical capacity in Guatemala, but one has to wonder why we're investing in foreign data collection when our own Statistics Canada is underfunded. Talk about misplaced priorities! -Support for Women Entrepreneurs in Jordan - Project number CA-3-P006026001, CA$10 million. Part of Canada's feminist international assistance policy, this project supports women starting businesses in Jordan. It's a noble cause, but shouldn't we be fostering our own female entrepreneurs before we start exporting our empowerment abroad? -Strengthening the National Institute of Forestry (INAB) in Guatemala - Project number CA-3-A032311004, costing CA$12.5 million. This initiative seeks to enhance forest governance and management in Guatemala. Meanwhile, back at home, Canadian forests are facing unprecedented challenges from wildfires and climate change. Hey, Jasperites, you think an extra $12.5 million could've helped manage our own forests better? -Youth Employment in Jordan - Project number CA-3-D000297001, CA$11 million. This project is about creating job opportunities for young people in Jordan through vocational training. It's ironic when our own youth are struggling to find employment, especially when local businesses are increasingly owned by foreign investors who seem to navigate around Canadian employment laws with ease. -Promoting Sustainable Agriculture in Ethiopia - Project number CA-3-A034692001, where we've thrown CA$20 million. The goal here is to support Ethiopia in adopting sustainable farming practices with an lgbtq and gender lens, but one must question the logic when Canadian farmers are dealing with droughts, floods, and market volatility. As a Saskatchewanian, this one hits close to home - our agriculture sector needs attention! -Improving Access to Quality Education in Lebanon - Project number CA-3-A034146001, CA$15 million. This project aims to improve educational infrastructure in Lebanon. Meanwhile, our own education system is grappling with curriculum debates, funding shortages, and the need for basic literacy and numeracy improvements. Perhaps if we focused on our own classroom crises, we'd have less to argue about online. These projects, while sounding noble in intent, leave you scratching your head about where this government's priorities truly lie - because it's certainly not under our own roof. Now, let's entertain the idea of a DOGE Division in Canada - not the cryptocurrency, but a Division of Government Efficiency. It's so absurd it's almost brilliant. In light of these international follies, maybe a DOGE division isn't such a crazy idea. It's time we started writing checks for our own backyard and stopped this global giveaway gala. #DOGEForCanadaPlease #cdnpoli I invite you all to dive into the site, screenshot some of these operational projects since 2016 (aka Trudeau's "stamp of approval" era), and share them, tagging the Liberal party and liberals, @GAC_Corporate (Global Affairs Canada) and any American accounts or influencers you think should know, so they understand Canadians disagree with Trudeau's spending and like Americans during Biden's reign, we're held hostage while our pockets are picked clean for the government's pet projects outside of the country. Show our government we're not as daft as they think. Link to Global Affairs Canada Project Browser👇🏻 I am including some screenshots of other projects not listed in my post. w05.international.gc.ca/proj…

Welcome to Canada… and nope those pay ranges for this job are not backwards… 🤷‍♂️

why @base from @brian_armstrong today

Calgarians on Reddit are frustrated that they can't get a tech job. That's because many of the jobs have been outsourced outside of Canada (while the tech companies get $ from Canadian tax payers) and LMIA scammed at Canadian expense. It's true for much of Canada's tech ecosystem and the peanuts they pay to begin with in comparison to the US. Canada will start seeing a brain drain. US wants to hire good and reliable tech talent so they hire Canadians and set up shops in Canada (main commercial RE driver in Vancouver) while Canadian tech companies don't hire Canadians and will pay for it later. Attached are some of the comments on the thread.