We need to change the emphasis of "evidenced based policies" from: "policies that follow the best available evidence" to: "policies that generate the best possible evidence". Experimentation >> observational analysis.

Perhaps heretical, but I think as we get bigger and better models for agentic coding, dev tools are going to become more and more valuable. Why would that be when the models will get better at just making the right program without the aid of dev tools? Because it will be much easier to associate a cost with developing code. We'll get really good at predicting how much a task will cost before a model starts. My prediction is that this will make the value of dev tools far more concrete. Can a smaller model accomplish the same task for a fraction of the cost with tools? Or maybe even the same expensive frontier models will accomplish the same work with far fewer tokens. Dev tools have always had the challenge that you had to persuade developers to learn them. But the agents will use what we tell them to use.

Aaron Pete is consistently the classiest act on this whole website.

I think wealth concentration is something worth worrying about. But setting that aside, I think this efficiency claim is wrong. Personal net worth doesn’t come at the expense of capital growing in the economy. It’s just a measurement of who’s in control of that capital.

This pathetic attitude is among the worst things about our political culture in Canada and I cannot reject it enough. It gets cloaked in the language of progressivism but it is deeply cynical, ugly, and regressive. Story time! Growing up, I was hugely inspired by RIM (BlackBerry). It was one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Waterloo. I thought it was so cool one of the most innovative companies on earth was an hour away from home. In fact, my program, Nanotechnology Engineering, was able to exist in part due to the philanthropy of Mike Lazaridis, who funded the Institute of Quantum Computing and Nanotechnology (along with the Perimeter Institute for theoretical physics, which is a brilliant asset for the province and country). Balsillie, for his part, has spent tens of not hundreds of millions of his personal wealth on advocacy and institutions to make Canada a better place. But he too was castigated in our media. Through high school, I saw how Canadas media took an axe to RIM founders (Mike and Jim), and basically cheered on the decline of the business against competition from Apple and Google. It was a complete disgrace. Well, in 2013 I got my second co-op job there, just as they rolled out BB10 (the QNX operating system). 6 weeks into my co-op, my entire department was laid off (Modems/Semiconductors). Nearly every one of my colleagues ended up moving to the US. Some of the most capable talent on earth, poached in weeks. It was loss that was absolutely devastating to witness. I have no doubt people like Bruce cheered on the spectacle, just like he would cheer the downfall of Shopify if it were to ever happen; despite the champion it’s been for the country, the thousands of good jobs it’s created, and all the spin-off businesses that have created huge wealth for Ontario. Well let me be clear that I will have none of this nonsense.

We need this kind of political leadership in Ontario: principled, growth-driven pragmatism.

They are going to present to Meryl Streep at the ceremony.

Espresso Diet Coke lime juice. Come at me.

It's actually two problems: 1. Way too many accelerators with no $ using government money to keep a fancy job 2. Exit market is limited due trading multiples compression 2 is more structural, 1 incentivizes fake KPIs If you disagree, "you're absolutely right!" 5 / 5 stars no drama.

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. youtube.com/watch?v=Qv43UsG6…

Don’t try to make the sovereign infallible; make its errors non-binding on those who decline.

New technology businesses that build with and for AI will need access to a variety of infrastructure and services. Some of those providers will be in Canada, but some won’t. Losing access to these service providers for a few hours, let alone a few days or weeks, can be existential for a new business. What assurances can you provide to entrepreneurs that the government will not increase the risk of them losing access to these providers because of a conflict between the government and the provider. Eg a conflict about fees regarding news postings, or a conflict where the government wants to weaken the use of encryption.