Bonus: Nvidia sheds almost $600 billion in market cap, biggest one-day loss in U.S. history
@satheeshraj88:
DeepSeek is the 21st Century Tech Version of Robinhood. And we’re loving it
@edzitron:
I’m so sorry I can’t stop laughing. OpenAI, the company built on stealing literally the entire internet, is crying because DeepSeek may have trained on the outputs from ChatGPT. They’re crying their eyes out. What a bunch of hypocritical little babies.
https://ft.com/content/a0dfed
@emmettmacfarlane.com:
Any Big Tech people who aren’t scumbags?
Editor of The Hub wants to MAGA-ize Canada, apparently.
Daniel Munro @dkmunro.bsky.social:
Sometimes I wonder, “Is it fair to draw parallels between Canada’s conservatives and the shitshow happening down south?”
And then a Canadian conservative answers the question for me.
@stevericketts.bsky.social:
sadly, it’s typical Sean Speer rightwing conservatism. for me, it makes The Hub unfollowable, even if it occasionally features articles by smart people such as Trevor Tombe
Aaron Wherry @aaronwherry.bsky.social
Truly don’t understand how anyone can look at what’s happening inside the US government right now and think, yeah, we should do something like that. x.com/Sean_Speer/s…
I mean, for one thing, it might all be rather illegal?
All the ways Elon Musk is breaking the law, explained by a law professor
Improving government processes is a worthy idea, but a glance at the headlines suggests DOGE is not the model you’re looking for.
I’m not sure there’s really any disagreement that government should work better in Canada. But there’s probably some European country we could emulate on that instead.
Feel a little sheepish about my initial tone because I don’t like arguing on the Internet. So let me put it this way: Making the government more efficient would be good. But what’s happening in the US doesn’t seem to me like a model to be emulated (even if you want a smaller government).
Sean Beggs @seanadb.bsky.social:
The only type who would argue with your first submission is not worth arguing with. Your point is clear and anyone who supports Musk’s efforts is not a serious person.
James Temperton @jtemperton.bsky.social:
SCOOP: Canada’s most prominent tech leaders, including Shopify executives Tobi Lütke, Daniel Debow and Kaz Nejatian, have a secret WhatsApp group called ‘Build Canada’ where they’re developing a vision for where they think the country should go next.
Are they Nazis too? Heartless, soulless greedy fuckers.
I have been a good Bling @blingdomepiece.bsky.social:
So many words in that article to say they were mad they would have to pay a fair share of taxes. Yeah that’s our country.
Barbara @esk1904.bsky.social:
Can’t any of them be decent human beings?
Matt @mattpark10.bsky.social:
Nope.
@quirkyhndl.bsky.social:
Well, you see, new tech generally just throws shit at the wall until something sticks, then tries to make a bunch of money off it before everyone realizes just how shitty it is.
Welcome to capitalism.
shittrap thirstposter @rnbwglltn.bsky.social:
The goal of tech billionaires isn’t rly to create AI. It’s to capture large amounts of tax money & accelerate climate change. Capital wants to heat the planet as fast as possible bc the greater the resource scarcity, the greater the emergency, the more power they have. AI provides a win-win pretext.
Excellent clip below:
@charlesrusnell.bsky.social:
Must read here via @jenstden.bsky.social
The Tech CEOs Who Want a DOGE for Canada
… Several of the Build Canada supporters frequently retweet Elon Musk or defend him in the face of criticism.
On Jan. 21, the day after Musk made two Nazi salutes at a rally at Trump’s inauguration, Shopify’s vice-president of engineering, Farhan Thawar, posted: “If your private chats are all about @elonmusk’s supposed salute instead of the speed and direction of Donald Trump’s executive orders, then you should change chat groups.” …
Build Canada lists 29 supporters, most of whom are CEOs of Canadian tech companies. Four of those supporters currently work at Shopify, and one of Build Canada’s staffers, Daniel Debow, is a former Shopify executive. The Canadian e-commerce company has been under scrutiny for allowing customers to sell merchandise with homophobic or Holocaust denial messages and for suddenly closing a diversity initiative that supported Black, Indigenous and female entrepreneurs.
After The Tyee sent Shopify and Build Canada an interview request for this story, Build Canada’s “About” page was edited to remove the list of supporters. But the list can still be found in an archived version of the page. …
“We absolutely need accountability in government, but that’s not really what DOGE is,” Mertins-Kirkwood said.
“It’s about breaking government. It’s hard to know with these tech leaders if what they’re saying is ‘We want efficiency,’ or if that’s just kind of the Trojan horse for ‘We want to blow up government.’”
… DOGE has also targeted watchdog agencies that would be or are involved in regulating Musk’s business ventures, which include Tesla, SpaceX and X. …
“Everyone wants to get more for less,” he said. “I just see this all as being kind of thinly veiled, classic conservatism — trying to advance privatization and deregulation under the veil of efficiency and these other kind of innocuous-sounding terms that are very separated from the public interest.”
Black Cat:
Arbitrary slash and cut, and replacement with “technology” without careful understanding and planning should be looked on with suspicion.
Especially with this bunch, they are looking for business for themselves, not delivering value-based services to public with taxpayer money
nancyjt:
I am sure that a lot of efficiencies can be found and that the use of new technologies can help a lot, just like they always have, but I don’t think that the Shopify people are the ones I want to do that.
A class-action lawsuit alleges Shopify Inc. reneged on a deal it offered some employees who were laid off in a recent round of cuts.
The class action alleges some of the Ottawa software business’ employees laid off at the start of May were presented with departure packages outlining hefty severance sums they would be entitled to should they sign the agreement within a few days.
However, once workers signed the agreements and before the deadline passed, Shopify allegedly told departing staff they would instead be given substantially smaller sums than were initially offered.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/shopify-layoffs-severance-1.6859351
Fakespot found nearly 26,000 of the 124,000 Shopify stores it analysed were “related to fraudulent practices”.
Of those, about 39% were described as “problematic sellers”, with counterfeit issues, possible brand infringements or a poor reputation.
Roughly 28% were possible scam stores, with privacy leaks and suspiciously cheap listings.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55420445
“I want DOGE to exist in Canada,” Shane Parrish, who runs a self-help website and newsletter aimed at executives,…
I want people like this self-help guru and internet ‘influencer’ not to exist in Canada.
G West:
I’ve been reading the remarks in the Globe by Shopify top-dogs and I am not impressed. I’d hoped for better – instead I see a slightly less offensive version of Musk’s insanity. We ain’t gonna save the planet by going to Mars and local businesses will continue dying unless people stop taking the easy way out – this has been happening man and boy – since the Walton Family started hollowing out small commerce across the Southern and Western USA – not surprisingly where Trumpian ideas are most deeply dug in. Bigger and faster ain’t always best…
Time to stop the utter tech drivel b*l sht – wake up and smell the coffee we’re dealing with an American Hitler in the White House – Stop worrying about your damn bottom line and wake up to what’s really at stake here.
Brian Kennelly:
Just deleted the Shop app. No more Shopify for me. Really losing patience with these tech nazis.
JCensored:
The Tek bros look like they’re working on a new Nazify app, too.
Anne__Ominous:
Unfortunately, some people with bodies and brains seem less capable of thinking than AI.
Steven Forth:
Part of what DOGE and related initiatives are trying to do (like Bezos recent redirection of the opinion page on WaPo) is to narrow the Overton window. The Overton window is the range of acceptable policies that could be considered. The goal is to force forward the next generation of privatization so that the large tech platforms (the closest thing we have in Canada is Shopify) can own more and more of our data. The goal is also to privatize as much of the economy as possible so that it can be brought under the control of a small number of extremely wealthy people.
Steve Cumming:
So they want an unelected body not responsible to Parliament to run wild though the federal departments. firing people, abolishing programs, and diverting funds to wherever the scurvy DOGEs prefer? That’s a hard no. They need to be told in no uncertain terms to stick this up the old back passage.
ingamarie:
Sure. But they have big dark money. We just have outrage and violent repartee.
skibum635:
Wow a real surprise coming from Millionaires/Billionaires that pretty much only looking out for themselves at the expense of all the rest of Canadian citizens. Maybe come up with some concrete ideas that will help low and middle income people instead of lining their own pockets.
ḵ̓a̱sḵ̓a̱k̓u:
Theyre billionaires, theyve been isolated and protected from the economy all their lives.
All they want is all the money. Not a lot of ir, all of it. Thats all they want.
@naturallyserious.bsky.social:
So basically,like Musk, the tech industry wants all federal funding to end for anything and anybody except for their businesses then it’s gimme, gimme. Shameless.
MUST WATCH 29:51 Min Posted by Hakuin to above Tyee article: DARK GOTHIC MAGA: How Tech Billionaires Plan to Destroy America by Blonde Politics, Nov 13, 2024
ron to Hakuin:
fascists, plain and simple.
mk1313:
Export these POS to the states if that;s what they want!
@northbayted.bsky.social:
they can start by defunding Postmedia.
Anne__Ominous:
The Conservative point of view seems to be “Why should we use the country’s wealth to increase the well-being of ordinary citizens when the already rich could have it all?” And why does this view-point appeal to so many not-rich voters?
I think because they want to become billionaires too, and stupidly think the techies will share. Not.
Inside Canadian tech’s not-so-quiet shift to the right, Canada’s tech leaders are cozying up with Pierre Poilievre in hopes he’ll deliver the innovation agenda the Liberals promised by Catherine McIntyre, Laura Osman and Murad Hemmadi, Jan 27, 2025, The Logic
In a WhatsApp group named Build Canada, some of the country’s most prominent technology leaders, including Shopify executives Tobi Lütke, Daniel Debow and Kaz Nejatian, as well as investor John Ruffolo, are developing a vision for where they think the country should go next. Hate to tell you this douche boys, it ain’t up to you, it’s up to ordinary Canadians.
The group started as a forum for innovation-sector leaders concerned about Canada’s trajectory to discuss ways to improve the country, two sources with first-hand knowledge of the initiative told The Logic. Tech industry figures in the chat hope to collaborate to generate policy ideas for the next federal government.
Talking Points
- After years of supporting the Liberals with donations and policy advice, Canada’s entrepreneurs and investors have soured on the party. They point to rising taxes, a drop in business investment and an exodus of tech talent as evidence that the government has failed them.
- Now, tech leaders are throwing their support behind the Conservatives and their leader Pierre Poilievre, hosting fundraisers and suggesting policy ideas for the party
Interviews with prominent tech leaders, as well as political lobbying and fundraising records, show a shift in support from the Liberal party to the Conservatives. Canada’s innovation community had worked closely with current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government when they were first elected in 2015, advising them on policy and donating to the party. But after nine years with Liberals in power, many in the tech sector are disillusioned by what they perceive as unmet expectations and a lack of support for entrepreneurs and innovation.Or, because of having to pay a tiny bit more in capital gains tax? Which Pierre Picklehead says he’s going to quash if he becomes PM. Remember tech boys, the Picklehead rarely tells the truth and is a bigger douche than all of you combined.
The Build Canada WhatsApp group, while not affiliated with the Conservatives, is just one of a number of signals that the country’s technology industry is ready for a change in Ottawa.
None of the group members agreed to speak on the record cowardly fuckersabout Build Canada’s purpose or their role within it. But one source stressed that, with an election looming, they have little time to waste if they hope to formalize the initiative. Debow, a vice-president of product at Shopify, told the group he is taking a leave of absence from the commerce firm, during which time he will work on the project, the sources said. In an email to The Logic in early January, Debow said he was not “leading anything,” appending a winking emoticon. He later updated his LinkedIn to indicate he is on leave from Shopify. Reached by phone, he declined to comment, saying “I don’t really want to talk to you about it.” which means they don’t want to talk to Canadians about it either. Sleazy fuckers.
While the members of the Build Canada WhatsApp group are saying little, elsewhere Canada’s tech sector and the Conservative party have gone public with their commitment to each other, frequently singing each others’ praises on social media.Copying the American Nazi Tech Douches and Adolf Orange?
Trudeau’s resignation has done little to quell the technology industry’s concerns about the Liberal government’s handling of the economy. Nor have reports that former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, who’s running to replace Trudeau, would reverse the government policy tech leaders most malign. The industry’s most vocal leaders are, it seems, intent on change and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has embraced their support.
The alliance echoes what’s happening in the U.S. between the second Donald Trump administration and Silicon Valley tech billionaires, who had traditionally supported the Democrats. In Canada, tech leaders hope a change of government in Ottawa will bring a second chance at building a more competitive innovation sector. For the Conservatives, the alliance gives them access to a vocal and well-capitalized community that’s motivated to fix what it sees as the country’s most vexing problems.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen more energy and optimism,” says Boris Wertz, founder and general partner at Vancouver-based venture capital firm Version One Ventures. “There’s so much chatter among entrepreneurs, founders, builders and investors about helping buying a new government.”
Tech leaders were similarly optimistic 10 years ago when the current Liberal government was first elected.
In 2015, the sector celebrated Trudeau’s win after nearly a decade of Conservative rule under Stephen Harper, who had alienated the tech community with policies widely viewed to have stifled science and research.
2024-11-09: Dr. Sandra Steingraber with a sign that reads, “Science is anti-fascist.”
While the Liberal party didn’t explicitly run on an innovation-focused platform, it sent early signals to the industry that it was serious about supporting it. Trudeau’s government promptly rebranded Industry Canada as Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and tech leaders were encouraged by an apparent willingness to set an ambitious innovation agenda that would address concerns about access to capital, talent and customers.
Navdeep Bains, innovation minister at the time, said his goal was to create the conditions to spawn another “10 Shopifys.” “I was super excited that they were listening,” says Wertz.
The 2017 budget solidified the Liberals as a pro-innovation party, with the government going so far as to say that “the future success of all Canadians” relied on it. In the budget, the government announced the Economic Strategy Tables, industry-led groups of about 100 private-sector members, tasked with advising the government on how to grow seven key sectors, including digital industries, manufacturing, cleantech and bioscience.
Wertz, who contributed to the digital industries group chaired by Shopify’s Lütke, was initially optimistic about the exercise. He flew from Vancouver to Ottawa five or six times over a period of about 10 months for day-long meetings alongside other industry leaders, contributing a tremendous amount of work, he says, to produce an innovation blueprint for the government.
Among the group’s recommendations, published in September 2018, was creating generous tax incentives to encourage entrepreneurship; establishing technology-adoption centres to make it easier to make more billions by taking from ordinary Canadians struggling to feed their families because of greedy ultra rich fuckers like the tech boysconnect investors with companies and ultimately to paying customers; improving digital infrastructure; and eliminating redundant regulations.which really means get rid of all regulations, including those meant to protect Canadians from the tech industry’s ruthless cruelty and profit raping.
“So many of the policies that we were trying to get done were promised. But, at the end of the day, we were kind of hoodwinked.” – John Ruffolo
More than six years later, few of the ideas have been implemented. “I don’t know what happened to that,” says Armen Bakirtzian, CEO of Kitchener, Ont.-based Intellijoint Surgical, who contributed to the report for the health and bioscience sector. “We were assured early on that this is not just an effort of creating a recommendation that’s going to get shelved, and that’s kind of what happened.”
“I think the Liberals, when they first got in, had a lot of really good promise and really tried to talk positively about supporting the technology sector,” says Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI). But, he says, “the policies that they’ve tried to launch, candidly, have failed.”
The Liberals have followed through on some of their innovation policies. They’ve completed two rounds of the Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative, which helps increase funding for startups, and recently pledged $1 billion for a third. Ottawa has also backed a patent collective for cleantech and programs like the $90-million ElevateIP to help startups secure and maintain their intellectual property rights.
An “exhaustive” list of failures, as Bergen describes it, overshadows those wins. He points to the creation of superclusters, designed to create thousands of jobs, that were ultimately downgraded to just “clusters.” He also cites the Canada Innovation Corporation, which was supposed to fix Canada’s poor productivity and tech adoption performance, but hasn’t seen the light of day.
Other tech leaders who spoke to The Logic said they were frustrated by the sluggish roll-out of the open banking system, first explored in February 2018 and now, after several delays, due to launch in early 2026.
Many tech founders have also been frustrated by the long wait for the Liberals to update the scientific research and experimental development (SR&ED) tax incentive, which it first promised to review in the spring 2017 budget. Ottawa announced changes last month, but has yet to unveil plans for a proposed patent box that would encourage firms to hold intellectual property in Canada. The Liberals have also failed to move forward with 2021 election promises to form a new Council of Economic Advisors or a digital policy task force to provide input to the federal fiscal and technology agenda.
“So many of the policies that we were trying to get done were promised,” Ruffolo says of the Liberals’ innovation commitments. “But, at the end of the day, we were kind of hoodwinked.”
Last June, Ruffolo gathered 86 business leaders at the TD Centre in Toronto’s financial district to hear Poilievre tell them why he should be Canada’s next prime minister.
Tech executives were well represented in the room. Attendees—of whom men outnumbered women roughly seven to one—included Magnet Forensics CEO Adam Belsher, Borrowell CEO Andrew Graham, Xanadu CEO Christian Weedbrook, ApplyBoard CEO Meti Basiri and Ada CEO Mike Murchison. They all listened as Poilievre set out his vision for Canada. Each paid up to $1,725 to attend.Fucking dirty, the lot of them, Pee Pee Pierre especially.
Before the gathering, it wasn’t clear if the country’s tech sector would back Poilievre. A fair number of the guests, many of whom had previously supported the Liberal Party, were on the fence about how to vote in the next federal election, Ruffolo says. “By that time, the tech community was done with the Liberals,” he explains. “But they didn’t know where to go.”
Ruffolo, who had made up his own mind months earlier, urged his guests to hear Poilievre out. One attendee, who asked not to be named, said he was impressed by Poilievre’s willingness to stand his ground—including on claims that CEOs have rolled over while Trudeau hiked their taxes. “He won’t deviate from his morals, which I appreciate,” said the guest, who runs a tech scale-up. Pee Pee doesn’t have any morals. What the fuck is dude talking about? Poilievre’s comments on keeping and growing companies in Canada also resonated with the entrepreneur.
By the end of the night, Ruffolo had little doubt Poilievre had the sector’s vote.
Ruffolo’s own donation records track the tech sector’s shift to the right. According to Elections Canada, Ruffolo last donated to the Liberals in 2021, after 15 years of exclusively giving to the party or its members. In April 2022—five months before Poilievre was elected Conservative Party leader—Ruffolo made donations to the soon-to-be leader and his party, where his political contributions have been flowing since.
Ruffolo says he can’t recall what prompted his Conservative donations in 2022.
“The only purposeful intention really started in 2024 after the capital gains fiasco,” he says of his contributions.Fucking greedy inhumane douche.
“So many people got inspired by the vibe shift in the U.S., and feeling like there’s a serious alternative that can create the same thing for Canada.” – Boris WertzGo to America you fuck nut, if you like their profit-raping so much.
Elections Canada filings also show a growing group of technology investors and executives have sought face time with Poilievre and his key lieutenants. Several attended ticketed fundraising events for the Conservative leader in 2024, including Sagard CEO Paul Desmarais III, DataStealth executive chairman Michael Hyatt, Intrepid Growth Partners co-founder Mark Shulgan, Noble co-founder Jelena Djuric, Version One Ventures’ Wertz, Impression Ventures managing partner Christian Lassonde, and Stingray CEO Eric Boyko.
Support for the Conservatives follows a change in fortunes for tech companies and their investors. Canada’s technology sector had enjoyed a historic two-year run leading up to 2022, with near-zero per cent interest rates driving a record US$14 billion in venture capital into Canadian tech companies in 2021.
In 2022, things changed fast. Rising interest rates, soaring inflation and an increasingly tense geopolitical environment prompted the biggest annual drop in the U.S. stock market since the 2008 financial crisis, with tech stocks driving many of the losses.How’s that Trudeau’s fault? Spell it out for me (my email is on my contact page).Startups struggled to raise money as investors conserved cash to weather the storm. The number of active businesses dropped, despite Canada’s population soaring. Housing affordability worsened, as did access to health care. Productivity plunged.
Across Canada, people blamed Trudeau and his government for the economic troubles.Not me. I live in reality. Climate chaos, social collapse largely driven by human pollution caused global warming and ever escalating greed by fucking sleaze shits like billionaire tech bros and their Nazi brethren in the USA are to blame, not Trudeau and his gov’t Then, in April 2024, many in the tech sector joined the chorus calling for Trudeau and the Liberals to go.
The volte-face was in response to the spring budget, where the government announced it would hike the taxable amount of capital gains—the earnings from selling assets like shares, bonds, real estate and companies. The move would only affect the richest Canadians, representing less than one per cent of the population, the government said. In exchange, Ottawa would collect an additional $19.4 billion in taxes over five years to feed back into services like housing and health care.
But, oh no, the rich fucking tech billionaires want more and more and more and more.
The tech sector was livid. Its leaders criticized the policy as an attack on entrepreneurs, including small-business owners and their families, who, they argued, worked tirelessly for the chance at a big payday from a once-in-a-lifetime sale.Fucking liars. 1) the tax hike is small, and 2) hits where it needs to hit, the rich.Critics warned the tax change would trigger an exodus of Canada’s brightest talent and companiesIf true, why are the rich fuckers kissing and buying Pee Pee’s ass, instead of Trump’s rump?, and freeze investment in the country. “The decision to move on capital gains is a signal that entrepreneurship and risk-taking is not valued,” Kim Furlong, CEO of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, told The Logic at the time.
In May, Lütke compared the policy to that of taxing cigarettes to discourage smoking. By the same logic, he said, a capital gains tax would deter people from starting and selling businesses, or investing in them. “To tax innovation, you’ll see the same thing,”Bullshit. These fuckers make so much money, they’d barely notice the increase he said.
For many, the tax policy was the final straw. “At some stage, the sum of all these smaller decisions that you don’t agree with kind of bubbles over,” says Wertz.
While the Canadian tech community became increasingly disenchanted with the Liberals, a parallel shift was happening south of the border.
After an overwhelming show of support for Democratic candidates in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections, tech executives—including venture capitalist David Sacks, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk and Andreessen Horowitz founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz—began donating huge sums to get bought the presidency. Heil Hitler, ooops, Trump!Donald Trump elected. The sector is now well represented in the new president’s administration, with officials coming from PayPal, Palantir, ScaleAI, SpaceX and Andreessen Horowitz. Musk, while not a government employee, will co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
What Italy students think of Musk
The relationship between Silicon Valley and the Republicans has seemingly galvanized Canada’s tech leaders. Some of them have adopted the language of their American counterparts, with calls for Canada’s own DOGE, and attacks on “wokeness” as a symbol of the left’s apparent failures. OMG! If true as reported, these techies are disgusting greedy racists! Canada does not need or want them.Some of Trump’s staunchest supporters from the tech sector—including Musk and Andreessen—have weighed in on Canada’s politics, with praise for Poilievre and ridicule for Trudeau.
“So many people got inspired by the vibe shift in the U.S., and feeling like there’s a serious alternative that can create the same thing for Canada,” says Wertz.
Rick Perkins, the Conservatives’ innovation critic, began to get a sense of the discontent in the tech sector well before Silicon Valley’s right turn or the Liberals’ capital gains announcement. Rather, it started when he began asking companies for feedback on the government’s now-defunct AI legislation, Bill C-27. “They’d come into the office and then we’d talk about C-27, but we’d talk about everything else that was going on,” Perkins says.
What followed was a campaign to meet with representatives from Canadian tech companies to ask them what a Conservative government should do to make the economy more productive, he says.
“I’ve been having the meetings. Pierre [Poilievre] has had a lot of meetings with them—probably more than even I’ve had,” Perkins says. Melissa Lantsman, the Conservative’s co-deputy leader, and national revenue critic Adam Chambers have also been part of the outreach effort.
Lobbying records show Lantsman met last year with representatives from open banking proponent Questrade Financial, right-wing video platform Rumble and innovation cluster Next Generation Manufacturing Canada. Perkins has heard from fintech firm Wealthsimple, generative AI startup Cohere, Fintechs Canada, crypto startup Shakepay and the Digital innovation cluster. Chambers’s list of contacts includes HR software developer Humi, accounting scale-up FreshBooks, bank-backed data firm Symcor and carbon-capture startup Deep Sky.
“We want innovation policy that actually works and the current Liberal government has not given us that.” – Armen Bakirtzian
Poilievre takes relatively few lobbying meetings—he’s called government relations professionals “utterly useless” and said businesses will have to convince everyday Canadians to back their policy proposals before a Conservative government will implement them. But he was in contact with Shopify executives in February and December last year, according to the federal lobbying registry. In a tweet last month, Poilievre praised Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and COO Kaz Nejatian for having “the backbone to stand up and fight for all entrepreneurs,” suggesting corporate Canada “learn from them in every way.”Fucking idiot. Tech dudes wanna rip Canadians off via not paying their fair share of taxes to make more billions while Pee Pee screams axe the carbon tax which puts money into the pockets of ordinary Canadians.
All those conversations have helped shape the Conservatives’ approach as they prepare for an upcoming election, says Perkins.
The Conservatives’ innovation policy ideas at this point aren’t very detailed—at least publicly. Perkins wouldn’t say what will be in the platform, but should the party form the next government, he believes it would move away from subsidies as Ottawa’s main form of support and instead reform the tax codeTranslation: Cut taxes for the ultra rich while cutting health and education for Canadians and increasing their taxes to incentivize innovation and investment, and ensure intellectual property stays in Canada.
“With what the Conservatives are proposing,” says Bergen, “I think if they’re done correctly, there’s a real shot here for this country to have a chance at being able to build an innovation economy that can rival any in the world.” Only way that can happen is to let these vile fuckers buy the PMO the way the Nazi tech billionaires bought the US presidency
Intellijoint’s Bakirtzian was pleasantly surprised when Poilievre took him up on an invitation to tour his Kitchener, Ont., office last fall—something he says Trudeau has never done. Bakirtzian says he invited leaders from across Kitchener-Waterloo, a hot spot for tech talent and startups, to participate in the meeting with Poilievre. The group spent over an hour discussing their problems and suggesting how the government could help solve them, he says.
“He was open to listening to what we had to say and to what our challenges were,” says Bakirtzian, adding that he was encouraged by Poilievre’s willingness to collaborate on policy ideas rather than prescribe solutions for what ails the industry.That’s because Pee Pee isn’t smart enough to prescribe solutionsand never has during his decades sucking off the public teat.
“It was just a refreshing change,” he says.
The meeting followed a similar one in Toronto last May where Xanadu hosted Lantsmanwho is likely Canada’s most racist hate-filled AfD schmoozing politician. Another Nazi. Perfect for Nazi tech boysfor a tour and discussion that included CCI’s Bergen and executives from scale-ups Borrowell, Canvass AI, D2L, Peraso and Viral Nation.
Thomas Park, former partner at BDC Capital, agrees that the innovation sector has lost confidence in the government as a reliable partner. “That trust needs to be rebuilt,” he says. But he cautioned against dismantling the current innovation agenda completely. “My concern is everybody’s so frustrated that we’re going to tear everything down, but don’t actually have an alternative solution aside from high-level talking points,” he says. Pee Pee and Harper’s Reformacon CPC never provide alternate solutions, they just lie, lie, lie some more, destroy what’s good and chant common sense of which they have none.
Bakirtzian and others who spoke to The Logic acknowledged that a potential Conservative government may end up disappointing them, just as the Liberals have. But the potential that the sector will fare better under Poilievre’s leadership is a gamble he said is worth taking.
“We want innovation policy that actually works and the current Liberal government has not given us that,” says Bakirtzian. “The natural reaction is to change, and the change is to a government that, in our eyes, is saying the right things. The proof will be in the pudding.”
HelloBonjour @hellobonjour.bsky.social:
I bet Mark Carney gets his security clearance before Poilievre.
***
Nvidia sheds almost $600 billion in market cap, biggest one-day loss in U.S. history
Finally had a chance to dig into DeepSeek’s r1…by Morgan Brown @morganb Jan 27, 2025
Let me break down why DeepSeek’s AI innovations are blowing people’s minds (and possibly threatening Nvidia’s $2T market cap) in simple terms…
0/ first off, shout out to @doodlestein who wrote the must-read on this here:
The Short Case for Nvidia Stock All the reasons why Nvidia will have a very hard time living up to the currently lofty expectations of the market. https://youtubetranscriptoptimizer.com/blog/05_the_short_case_for_nvda
1/ First, some context: Right now, training top AI models is INSANELY expensive. OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. spend $100M+ just on compute. They need massive data centers with thousands of $40K GPUs.And massive insanely wasteful mounts of water and energy It’s like needing a whole power plant to run a factory.
2/ DeepSeek just showed up and said “LOL what if we did this for $5M instead?” And they didn’t just talk – they actually DID it. Their models match or beat GPT-4 and Claude on many tasks. The AI world is (as my teenagers say) shook.
3/ How? They rethought everything from the ground up. Traditional AI is like writing every number with 32 decimal places. DeepSeek was like “what if we just used 8? It’s still accurate enough!” Boom – 75% less memory needed.
4/ Then there’s their “multi-token” system. Normal AI reads like a first-grader: “The… cat… sat…” DeepSeek reads in whole phrases at once. 2x faster, 90% as accurate. When you’re processing billions of words, this MATTERS.
5/ But here’s the really clever bit: They built an “expert system.” Instead of one massive AI trying to know everything (like having one person be a doctor, lawyer, AND engineer), they have specialized experts that only wake up when needed.
6/ Traditional models? All 1.8 trillion parameters active ALL THE TIME.
DeepSeek? 671B total but only 37B active at once. It’s like having a huge team but only calling in the experts you actually need for each task.
7/ The results are mind-blowing:
– Training cost: $100M → $5M
– GPUs needed: 100,000 → 2,000
– API costs: 95% cheaper
– Can run on gaming GPUs instead of data center hardware Fucking wow.
8/ “But wait,” you might say, “there must be a catch!” That’s the wild part – it’s all open source. Anyone can check their work. The code is public. The technical papers explain everything. It’s not magic, just incredibly clever engineering.
9/ Why does this matter? Because it breaks the model of “only huge tech companies can play in AI.” You don’t need a billion-dollar data center anymore. A few good GPUs might do it.
10/ For Nvidia, this is scary. Their entire business model is built on selling super expensive GPUs with 90% margins. If everyone can suddenly do AI with regular gaming GPUs… well, you see the problem.
11/ And here’s the kicker: DeepSeek did this with a team of <200 people. Meanwhile, Meta has teams where the compensation alone exceeds DeepSeek’s entire training budget… and their models aren’t as good.
12/ This is a classic disruption story: Incumbents optimize existing processes, while disruptors rethink the fundamental approach.
DeepSeek asked “what if we just did this smarter instead of throwing more hardware at it?”
13/ The implications are huge:
– AI development becomes more accessible
– Competition increases dramatically
– The “moats” of big tech companies look more like puddles
– Hardware requirements (and costs) plummet
14/ Of course, giants like OpenAI and Anthropic won’t stand still. They’re probably already implementing these innovations. But the efficiency genie is out of the bottle – there’s no going back to the “just throw more GPUs at it” approach.
15/ Final thought: This feels like one of those moments we’ll look back on as an inflection point. Like when PCs made mainframes less relevant, or when cloud computing changed everything.
AI is about to become a lot more accessible, and a lot less expensive.
The question isn’t if this will disrupt the current players, but how fast.
P.S. And yes, all this is available open source. You can literally try their models right now. We’re living in wild times!
Momma, I’m going viral! No substack or gofundme to share but a few things to add/clarify:
1/ The DeepSeek app is not the same thing as the model. Apps are owned and operated by a Chinese corporation, the model itself is open source.
2/ Jevon’s paradox is the counter argument. Thanks papa @satyanadella. Could be a mix shift in chip type, compute type, etc. but we’re constrained by power and compute right now, not demand constrained.
3/ The techniques used are not ground breaking. It’s the combination of them w/the relative model performance that is so exciting. These are common eng techniques that combined really fly in the face of more compute is the only answer for model performance. Compute is no longer a moat.
4/ Thanks to all for pointing out my NVIDIA market cap numbers miss and other nuances – will do better next time, coach.
David Roberts @volts.wtf:
So, but wait … a Chinese AI just came along & completely undercut the argument for the vast, rapid expansion of power generation in the US? The whole hype was just a function of shitty, lazy programming?
Where’s a good explainer of this shit?
More details in this long excellent thread:
Karen Hao @karenhao.bsky.social:
As someone who has reported on AI for 7 years and covered China tech as well, I think the biggest lesson to be drawn from DeepSeek is the huge cracks it illustrates with the current dominant paradigm of AI development. A long thread.
First, what is DeepSeek? A Chinese firm that was able to produce an open-source AI model with roughly 1/50th of the resources of state-of-the-art models yet still beat OpenAI’s o1 on several benchmarks.
…
Many journalists have written extensively about those externalities. When these massive data centers come to town, they distort power supplies (per @bloomberg.com’s @leonardonclt.bsky.social, @naurtorious.bsky.social, @andretartar.bsky.social)…
AI Needs So Much Power, It’s Making Yours Worse
There’s a strong link between proximity to AI data centers and higher levels of distorted power in residential areas
…they take up drinking water – yes, drinking water, because of the water quality required to cool these facilities – which threatens to hike water prices for families…
www.theatlantic.com/technology/a…
…they extend the lives of gas & coal plants, worsening air quality (per@washingtonpost.com’s @evanhalper.bsky.social) – not just bc fossil fuels are the fastest way to surge energy supply but bc 24/7 facilities can’t run solely on intermittent renewables.
www.washingtonpost.com/business/202…
Then there are the global impacts. More coal & gas means more carbon emissions, accelerating our climate crisis. Hence why Google & MSFT saw a ~50% & 30% jump in emissions since 2019 & 2020 respectively (from @darakerr.bsky.social at @npr.org).
…
Now on top of the negative externalities on people’s power, water, air, and global climate, we have another: the ceding of more & more control over critical energy & water infrastructure to Silicon Valley. I wrote about this last week in @theatlantic.com.
www.theatlantic.com/technology/a…
…
DeepSeek is the flip side of the same coin: It innovated because of, not in spite of, its constraints. And now that it has upended the assumptions of the dominant AI paradigm, we should reject its costly trade-offs and seek new ways to develop AI without so many harms.
***
@nph1018.bsky.social:
And caused the largest company in THE WORLD to lose nearly 20% of its value on a single day.
@artemisprime.bsky.social:
The entire plan Trump announced is now embarrassingly obsolete and a waste of money given this news.
@michaelajb.breadandros.es:
Can’t wait to drink soda and eat soap in empty data centers after the planet dries completely up
Ken Ryan @kenryan.bsky.social:
Better “business” is convincing the federal government to hand you a 12-digit pile of free money!
@perry313.bsky.social:
Trust us, we are here to help you! Don’t pay any attention to those “bags” of crypto and rising temperatures.
chromacat.xyz @chromacatxyz.bsky.social:
….now the market is being propped up by 7 companies that are hyping AI as the silver bullet to defeat all of humanities problems. Yet the main people that will benefit are those 7 companies. This is now a new arms race cold war etc