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Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

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Re: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

#41

Post by ReligiousFlames »

Animats wrote: post #14
dannyr wrote: post #6

Crazy. People on Hacker News are still upset at Google for shutting down Reader.

And their fiber-optic to the home ISP. That's quite relevant here.

Google Wi-Fi mesh network in Mountain View hasn't worked in a long time. Toronto may well get similar service decline.

Also, Starbucks Google Wi-Fi rarely uses Google Fibre, IME, and instead uses commercial providers like AT&T and Comcast. Plus, Starbucks hasn't deployed much SGWF in Silicon Valley so it's still basically vaporware. (There's a Starbucks in Santa Clara with non-Google Wi-Fi as slow as dial-up.) They'd be wise to cancel the Google partnership and go with an outsourcer whom has access to a couple of big providers to maximize cheapest/fastest/coverage and handles all the deployment, support and security.

Re: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

#42

Post by wbl »

sanswork wrote: post #38
wungsten wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that U of T spans some of the best real estate in the city, and obviously students want to live near there.

So the uni should relocate or build more extensive student housing? Not sure how that is a problem for the city itself. Not everyone gets to live in prime areas.

If Toronto was building everywhere they would.

Re: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

#43

Post by lawnchair_larry »

parasubvert wrote: post #35
tenpies wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also shouldn't be ignored that labour costs in Canada are less than half of what they are in the US Should add that this works both ways. Most Canadians who can, do end up leaving for the US since they can easily make 2 - 4X the income, even after CoL and insurance. There is a non-trivial amount of brain drain happening in Canada.

s/most/some I was an expat in the US for many years, the story was the same in the mid-90s. Many try it, some stay, some come back. I still work for a US company but moved back. The current political climate has a big impact on encouraging people to stay in Canada, especially with NAFTA and the H1B programs hanging by a thread. Imagine thousands of Canadians with TN status getting told they need to move back immediat…

That reason has nothing to do with those. It's to get around H1-B Visa caps by transferring them after a year.

Re: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

#44

Post by jacquesm »

vtange wrote: post #15

I can't help but notice right now that Toronto's name has been increasingly pushed as some sort of "next tech centre" (well, many cities in the world want to be something like that). Can someone who's actually there fill me in on what's happening there? How does Toronto's scene compare to say, New York or Seattle?

Toronto has had a pretty good high-tech scene since the mid 90's. The area around the old carpet factory and Front street as well as a good part of King street going into town have housed and are housing many high tech companies.

Front 151 was a major hub for North America and allowed co-location and cheap fiber so a lot of DC activity sprang up around it and that in turn led to many start-ups choosing Toronto. The fact that there are two excellent universities nearby (Waterloo and UFT) helped a lot in that it sourced a stream of very capable programmers.

The only thing that stopped Toronto from developing further as a high tech city is the brain drain to the valley were engineers could easily make double of what they could make in Toronto.

http://www.151frontstreet.com/

Re: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

#45

Post by robotresearcher »

sanswork wrote: post #38
wungsten wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that U of T spans some of the best real estate in the city, and obviously students want to live near there.

So the uni should relocate or build more extensive student housing? Not sure how that is a problem for the city itself. Not everyone gets to live in prime areas.

UT is already present in the suburbs.

Re: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

#46

Post by eigenvector »

parasubvert wrote: post #35
tenpies wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also shouldn't be ignored that labour costs in Canada are less than half of what they are in the US Should add that this works both ways. Most Canadians who can, do end up leaving for the US since they can easily make 2 - 4X the income, even after CoL and insurance. There is a non-trivial amount of brain drain happening in Canada.

s/most/some I was an expat in the US for many years, the story was the same in the mid-90s. Many try it, some stay, some come back. I still work for a US company but moved back. The current political climate has a big impact on encouraging people to stay in Canada, especially with NAFTA and the H1B programs hanging by a thread. Imagine thousands of Canadians with TN status getting told they need to move back immediat…

I know Google Waterloo has some actual permanent engineering teams but Microsoft and Amazon Canada seem to be strictly L-1 visa farms.

The political climate is much talked about but if anything the rate of brain drain has increased as more and more SV companies make an effort to recruit in Toronto. In the early 2000s the subset of US companies that recruited at all in Canada did it strictly at UW. Now all the majors have a campus presence at even mid-tier Canadian schools like UVic.

Re: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

#47

Post by tormeh »

win_ini wrote: post #19
vtange wrote: post #15

I can't help but notice right now that Toronto's name has been increasingly pushed as some sort of "next tech centre" (well, many cities in the world want to be something like that). Can someone who's actually there fill me in on what's happening there? How does Toronto's scene compare to say, New York or Seattle?

"Toronto is like New York, but without all the 'stuff'" - Steve Martin, SNL. Toronto has grown up a lot in the pst few years. The canadian dollar is about 20% less than USD, so VC dollars go further - and while competitive, hiring engineers is nothing like the bay. That said, there is a shallow pool of senior SaaS startup folks in Toronto compared to SF or New York.

>The canadian dollar is about 20% less than USD, so VC dollars go further

How expensive a nation is and the exchange rate of its currency is independent.

Re: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

#48

Post by sanswork »

wbl wrote: post #42
sanswork wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the uni should relocate or build more extensive student housing? Not sure how that is a problem for the city itself. Not everyone gets to live in prime areas.

If Toronto was building everywhere they would.

Toronto is building everywhere around there. That's why every conversation about development in Toronto goes back and forth between 'too many condos!' and 'too expensive housing'.

Re: Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

#49

Post by sanswork »

ReligiousFlames wrote: post #41
Animats wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And their fiber-optic to the home ISP. That's quite relevant here.

Google Wi-Fi mesh network in Mountain View hasn't worked in a long time. Toronto may well get similar service decline. Also, Starbucks Google Wi-Fi rarely uses Google Fibre, IME, and instead uses commercial providers like AT&T and Comcast. Plus, Starbucks hasn't deployed much SGWF in Silicon Valley so it's still basically vaporware. (There's a Starbucks in Santa Clara with non-Google Wi-Fi as slow as dial-up.) They'd…

Toronto already has a city wide wi-fi that has never worked!
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