Avid Amoeba

  • 248 Posts
  • 6.32K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Avid AmoebatoCanadaNot So 'Crappy' Any Longer?
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    21 hours ago

    Err, I bought a SuperCycle in 2005 which ended up unusable within two seasons worth of riding due to brake and rim deformations. I’ve also bought numerous spare bike parts, cables, tools prior to 2010. They were invariably of very poor quality. Cables rusted, tools ruined other parts due to poor tolerances and weak materials. Once you handle parts and tools made by the typical bike industry, the differences in quality and durability becomes obvious. I don’t know how they are today but this was a conscious choice to reduce costs and pad profits. It’s not like there were no better bikes on the low end of the spectrum. The first cheap non-CT bike I bought in 2011 second hand (Iron Horse made in 2006) and serviced with non-CT tools and parts is still in use today by a friend.








  • We need a national, public carrier that provides a baseline, perhaps subsidized mail and parcel service that facilitates trade by everyone who isn’t Amazon or Walmart. Looking at parcel market share today is meaningless given that Amazon is the largest player in online orders by far and they use this market position to operate their own parcel services at rock bottom prices. We need everyone else to be able to ship reliably and cheaply. Like the coffee equipment store in Alberta I order from. Or some store on the other side of that GTA. Canada Post does this today and it should continue to do it tomorrow while providing well paying jobs. I hope Carney has similar thoughts on the issue and recognises CP as a necessary economic growth infrastructure for Canada.

    In addition this would keep what FedEx and UPS can charge lower as well as keep their workers’ salaries higher. Also the major private carriers are American and FedEx is already using gig subcontractors to deliver. Many of those FedEx trucks have a small subtext saying something like “Operated by ACME Shipping Ltd”




  • Some of the most insidious forms of decentralization have occurred at the level of politics. Provincial governments routinely engage in buck-passing and blame avoidance, attempts to pin responsibility on the federal government for matters under their own jurisdiction.

    This is a significant problem but it won’t be solved by centralization. People in any organization, public, private, engage in shifting the blame on fuckups. It doesn’t matter where the real responsibility lies, as long as the audience buys the blame.



  • (sorry for the long delay)

    No prob whatsoever. I appreciate your time.

    As for the computer, I have no idea and I’m not skilled enough to check. I ordered some push-pull quad channel buffers from TI and Nexperia, SOIC breakout board and decoupling caps. Unfortunately I made it work using a Trinket M0 with a trivial CircuitPython program before those arrived. Already tested it on a bike ride and just sitting powered on over 24 hours. No failure so far, so I conformally coated it and installed it. The fly was killed with a bazooka. 😂 And so I think I’m gonna keep it like that and will revisit the new buffer ICs I bought if it fails again, or if I need to build another adapter. Thank you for your help!