Stéphane Charette 🇨🇦

Someone I know after working for a big grocery store for 14 years was happy to tell me they make $1 over the minimum wage. They can only be scheduled for 24 hours per week. I suspect if they got scheduled for 40 hours the company would have to pay them benefits. The company they work for is public. Looking up the CEO, he gets paid ~$12.6M per year. While the employees are making basically minimum wage, which is $18.25/hour in BC. The CEO pays himself more than $8000/hour. He makes over $64,000 in a single 8-hour day, more than the employees make in an entire year. I don't care who you are, no amount of work you do could possibly be worth this much over your employees. This is wage theft, and when combined with all the executives of the company, artificially increases the cost of products sold in the stores for all Canadians. Tax. The. Rich. #WealthInequality #Corruption #TaxTheRich

I worked for 6 years for a company. One morning, they announced the company had been bought out, and 50% of the staff was immediately terminated in that same meeting. All remote employees including myself were immediately gone. The executives' shares and options were worth millions. The options the regular employees had were underwater, absolutely worthless. The news had a field day, announcing how a Vancouver company had been sold for millions. There were press releases and celebration. No one talked about -- or knew? -- that 25 employees had been terminated. It certainly wasn't in the press release We fucked over 50% of our employees to get here, but hey, we made millions! Six years of extreme hard work at a startup, and I had a t-shirt and a mug to show. Hadn't thought about it in a while. Guess I'm still bitter. #Startup

@danirabbit@mastodon.online What I've never understood about that take on the topic is...how many men are you friends with who has committed assault? Or any crime? It isn't like most people are hanging out with criminals, or folks in prison. Most of us are "normal", not homicidal maniacs assaulting people in our free time. Like most adults, I live at home, raise my kids, teach my teenagers how to drive, convince them to do their homework, typical stuff. It isn't like "men" provide safe harbour to folks like the "Cornell 7". We're not out here trying to cause all sorts of pain to fellow humans, much less our mothers, sisters, and daughters.

CBC headline: The world wants more Canadian-made water bombers. Can Canada build them fast enough? ...as I sit here at home, surrounded by immense fires to the north and the south. I think we have our answers. Some parts of the country are drowning. Meanwhile, we had no winter, and no rain in months. Everything is so dry, a bear fart in the woods risks starting a new forest fire. The problem isn't really the lack of water bombers. The problem is we're doing nothing about climate change.

Required music video for today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs069dndIYk #September21

9pm on a Friday. My 19yo is outside with a bunch of friends. They have an assortment of scissors, trimmers, combs, and other hair-related tools & products spread out on a table in the back yard. Giving each other haircuts! This Mortal Coil had an album about this very scenario. It was called "It'll End In Tears".

3 months of solar panels almost done. Only 4 days left to August. June: 1.22 MWhJuly: 1.42 MWhAugust: 996 kWh August won't be as high as I thought because we've had so many days where the sky was full of wildfire smoke. Total electricity generated over the last 3 months: 3.64 MWh. BC Hydro buys that back at $0.10/kWh, meaning a credit of $364 for the last 3 months. Or $121 per month. I still cannot extrapolate out for the year, since I know the winter months won't generate as much electricity. Nevertheless, very happy with my rooftop solar panels. I still think I did the right thing to lower my use of BC Hydro, even if it didn't eliminate it completely. #SolarPower #BCHydro

RE: https://flipboard.com/@cbcnews/british-columbia-i8sdok9nz/-/a-hXhtQBLkQSGXqNFHnFYf0Q%3Aa%3A107108217-%2F0 I was at over 100 donations when I stopped because Canadian Blood Services stopped the weekend and evening clinics. You cannot cancel the most popular appointment times then complain there aren't enough people giving blood.

@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social The real reason Trump is interested in Canada: he wants our universal health care. /s

@sand@mindly.social Wait...more than just lakes were renamed in this image! I still think some famous Canadians should also be in there. For example, lake "Banting & Best"?

Preliminary numbers are in. This is on the west side of Lake Okanagan, along Westside Road, on the Vernon side of the lake. Current estimate is 230 homes destroyed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZcAf5guCuI #ClimateChange #ForestFires #Okanagan

At the very least, make sure your SEO template substitutions are working before sending out your junk e-mails. (In reference to the "[Website]" in the spam e-mail.) #SEO #Spam

@loucyx@mastodon.social Sometimes you only get to pick one!

RE: https://beige.party/@farah/117064083040064545 Just out of curiosity, isn't this exactly what LLMs do? Finish sentences?

C and C++ developers often use !, && and ||. Many don't know that not, and and or (among others) have been part of C and C++ for 3 decades. They were introduced to C in 1995, and to C++ in 1998. if (!ok) if (not ok) if (var_a && var_b) if (var_a and var_b) if (var_c || var_d) if (var_c or var_d) Personally, I much prefer using the keywords not, and, and or. I find it makes the code much easier to read naturally. #C #Cpp

@hellomiakoda@pdx.social There is a famous scene where they show us where (almost) every player is virtualized, in a world where the physical players have been removed.

@GeePawHill@mastodon.social I'm a bit confused by the "Translate" link. Note they must be related to the Nigerian Prince that contacted me a while ago. I wired them some money to cover the transfer costs of sending me millions. Been a month. Should be here any day now...

In the mid-1990s I lived in Vancouver on the Pacific coast, and I was interviewing for a job in Florida. The person interviewing me misunderstood how timezones work. Interview was scheduled for 9am. He thought he had to call me at 6am Eastern Time, which worked out to be 3am Pacific Time for me. Phone rings at 3am. I was half asleep and confused, and he offered to call back in a few hours. I told him nevermind, I'm awake now, let's do the interview! I did end up getting the job, and worked there for some time. (Never forgot you, Tim W.) #Timezones

Desktop started heating up yesterday. Package measured 100 Celcius. Shuts down before I have a chance to do much in the BIOS. I've removed the water cooler -- first time doing that.Cleaned up old thermal paste and applied new paste -- first time doing that. Looks like this is a 3-pin Corsair, so I believe I cannot use PWM, it must be set to DC. I never knew what to set it to in the BIOS. I'm a software guy. Definitely not into hardware.

I'm so pissed. Fires have been increasing in this area for the past 23 years, ever since the big Kelowna Firestorm in August 2003. We've known for a long time that climate change is a thing. At first we were calling it global warming. Introduced in a 1975 paper, then in the news starting in 1988. And we've done almost nothing. Stop building pipelines across the country! Stop pumping oil, and instead pump more funding into wind, solar, and electric cars. Find ways to convince companies to allow their employees to work from home instead of sitting in traffic every day while vehicles burn fuel. And tax the rich with their private jets and massive carbon footprints. What will it take for our politicians to do something? The number of fires and evacuations near me is astounding. Over 230 homes burned so far in the last few days. And tonight it is getting worse. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/summerland-bc-wildfire-aug-7-9.7300528 #Wildfires #BritishColumbia #Okanagan

English is not my first language, but I'm pretty sure that's now how this works:

Flu and COVID-19 shots are free of charge for everyone six months of age and older through British Columbia's public health system. For the 2026/2027 season, the official provincial rollout begins on October 1, 2026. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/practitioner-professional-resources/pharmacare/pharmacies/vaccine-resources-for-pharmacists

Chart on the left is what a typical sunny day looks like with the solar panels. 54 kWh produced by 18 panels on my roof. Chart on the right is today (Aug 8), with no clouds, but very heavy layer of smoke in the valley from all the wildfires. Only 28 kWh gemerated. #SolarPanels #Okanagan #Wildfires

Catching up this evening on issues and PRs that have been queuing up for Darknet/YOLO. Two different users submitted nearly identical 50-line patches for a particular issue. Variable names are the same, comments are very similar, and the logic is identical. If it was a 5-line change, this wouldn't be difficult to imagine. But the patches are ~50 lines each. I assume this was created using a LLM. So much LLM-generated submissions. #Darknet #YOLO #LLM

It is raining ash outside this evening. Not sure from which wildfire. #Okanagan #Wildfire

RE: https://newsie.social/@servelan/117000220563493486 They should double the amount every time tRump tries to meddle with the court ruling.

@APBBlue@thepit.social Clueless guy question: does taking birth control delay menopause? What I mean is if you take the pill for 3 years in your 20s, does that mean there are 3 extra years at the end where a person still has eggs and doesn't start menopause? Or is menopause not dictated by the number of eggs someone has?

Took a bit of determination, but managed to push both of them through. Not sure what inspired me to get a set of earrings today.

First Monday in August: "optional pants day."

Speaking of vi (the text editor) if you asked me which keys are used to move up, down, left, right, I'd have no idea beyond "right hand, hjkl". But when my fingers are over the home keys and I'm moving around a file, I have no trouble doing it. Second nature after 30+ years of using vi. #vi

@Flowermob@mastodon.social Luigi Mangione tried that...somewhat. It had an impact for a very short time, but we've now proven we need to do this on a much bigger scale, or perhaps schedule it regularly to have the necessary impact. Being worried about prion disease if we were to start eating them, I suggest we launch them to Mars. With only potatoes for supplies.

I think the hardest part of working on Munin plugins is that Munin only runs every 5 minutes. Every time you make a change and re-install the plugin, you must wait until it runs again to see if the change worked.. #Munin #Cpp

My father passed away nearly 1 year ago from pancreatic cancer. Hope this helps people soon. Would be nice to at least have some chance at survival.

Watching the speech from earlier today, but the comments are absolutely awful. Same crap posted every second. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx9ExdjaREg

I changed my mind. I think this video is a better place to start to listen to her music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5oZ80Daduc

@sirwumpus@tilde.zone It has been part of the C++ language for a long time. If using Microsoft Visual Studio, use the /permissive- parameter to tell it to stick to the C++ standard and disable the Microsoft-specific extensions. There is no need to include the ISO646 header, which is deprecated: https://en.cppreference.com/cpp/header/ciso646

@ophis@brain.worm.pink What kind of "friends" are you people keeping!? I know very little people. The ones I do know, like my neighbours, I've known for years, and I'd say I know them well. I've lived in this house for 26 years. They raised their kids on the same cul-de-sac street as I've raised my own children. And for certain, no-one I've known has ever told me or even hinted that they might be the sort of folks you're implying. If you are "presenting male" and without saying anything other people are testing boundaries or admitting to shit, then I still think you're hanging out with the wrong kind of crowd. Turn around, and find "boring" people like myself and the other adults I know who don't sexually assault people. Not all men are bad guys. Just like not all women are bad women. (See my previous post about that.) And to somehow pretend that all women are evil because of what happened to us at school is just as misleading as the posts that claim all men are the same.

RE: https://masto.ai/@rbreich/117351030889438758 Maybe that's how they think it will "trickle down"? /s

@mloxton@zeroes.ca There is no choice. We know that no means no. If one woman says no!, and 99 say it is ok, then the answer still has to be a very firm "no".

Some people should change their voicemail messages to: You've reached [name]. I don't ever check my voicemail, so don't bother leaving a message. My phone will tell me I missed a call from you. I'll get back to you once I'm free. I'd actually prefer that to leaving a message that never gets picked up. #Voicemail #Cellphone

There are only 2 years in the 2000-2099 range where fall starts on September 21st. 20922096 I thought this sounded unusual. Doesn't fall typically start on September 21? Nope. Do you know when was the last time fall started on September 21? The year 1000... Over 1000 years ago. (Fall this year in the northern hemisphere begins on Tuesday, September 22 at 17:05 PT.) #FallEquinox

Things governments should do at municipal, provincial, and federal levels: tax the richadd taxes for owning and use of private planes, yachts, many vehicles, and/or high-end expensive vehiclesdisallow return-to-office mandatestax companies that prevent employees from working at homesupport and fund local ("Canadian") companies that want to create electric vehicles (see the problems Edison Motors has run into)encourage Canadians to install solar panels so we don't have to burn fossil fuels (e.g., rebates, or tax those who live in particularly sunny areas who don't want panels)discourage the building of cross-country fossil fuel pipelines, instead of investing into building more of themhold politicians immediately accountable when they make laws or decisions that makes climate change worse

This piece of music is incredible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3_fjdUiamc It is used by Paul Cooper in his Fall Of Civilizations series. https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/ If you're interested in history, archeology, ancient empires, or how/why they've failed, I strongly recommend his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations/videos #FallOfCivilizations

Why does this make me think of Jesse and Walter with their methylamine? The article says the containers held vegetable oil. Definitely something Pinkman would have said. https://www.castanet.net/news/Metro-Vancouver/627165/West-Van-police-bust-BMW-driver-with-industrial-size-oil-drums-strapped-to-roof

Had an image file I couldn't view. So I did this: stephane@server /m/tmp> file image.png image.png: 7-zip archive data, version 0.3 Oh! Like that's not suspicious at all! If you wanted to get my attention, now you certainly got it.

Yeah...let's focus on finding and shooting the messenger, they're obviously the ones that need to be punished. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/5/pentagon-polygraphs-military-staff-over-media-leaks-report #USPol

RE: https://mstdn.ca/@Jam123/117058393919436661 This has now grown to cause an evacuation alert to be posted for Peachland, the next city to the north.