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Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

bloomberg.com

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

#71

Post by [deleted] »

drpgq wrote: post #70
eigenvector wrote: post #36

> He’s also hinted at tech’s ability to overhaul zoning rules and control housing costs, a particular interest of Alphabet’s Page. Yeah, right. Toronto is one of the most retrograde cities on housing intensification (it still hasn't intensified around the Bloor-Danforth subway that was built a generation ago)[1]. In fact many neighbourhoods are losing population as the region grows due to extremely restrictive zoning…

> He’s also hinted at tech’s ability to overhaul zoning rules and control housing costs, a particular interest of Alphabet’s Page. Yeah doesn't Silicon Valley and San Francisco have some pretty stringent zoning rules against intensification?

[deleted]

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

#72

Post by OrthoMetaPara »

easilyBored wrote: post #3

"Sidewalk Labs has discussed creating an entire micro-city or district that could showcase the company’s ideas for urban planning...." all great, until Google decides to stop funding /working on the project.

Well there would obviously be contractual agreements put in place for something like this.

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

#73

Post by halflings »

rckrd wrote: post #21
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?

The University of Toronto is home to Geoffrey Hinton and his research lab. Hinton was the first to use backpropagation for machine learning and a lot of the techniques used today were pioneered by his lab. He is also manages the Google Brain team in Toronto. Yann LeCun, the director of AI at Facebook, also did a postdoc at Toronto. [0] http://learning.cs.toronto.edu:40292/people#Faculty [1] http://yann.lecun.com/

+ Yoshua Bengio in Montreal.

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

#74

Post by bigmanwalter »

tormeh wrote: post #47
win_ini wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

In this case it isn't though. Canadian engineers make less than American engineers

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

#75

Post by aaaawweeeee »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #65
jensvdh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more companies are turning towards Canada after all the immigration bullshit the US government is pulling.

I think this is it, and it does nothing to help the tech companies' reputations to move these jobs. The "immigration bullshit" was in response to outsourcing, immigration, and exploitation of visa programs to exploit cheap labor and keep wages down. By shipping these jobs overseas at the first sign of a worker/employer leverage shift, it shows us that these companies don't care about providing for its employees, they…

Unless you have strong unions who can wrestle with the tech strong-arms, tech companies, or any company, don't have to pander to your basic necessity for a decent working life.

The unions in the US are pathetic, and corrupted by the mafia, and workers are suffering humiliations because of that.

Here's a tragicomic anecdote that illustrates my point:

Recently in Germany, Tesla has been struggling with the German unions because Tesla has been paying below union wages to a German company they bought. So far, Tesla offered each employee a one-off €1,000 ($1,090) bonus, an extra €150 a month, and €10,000 of Tesla shares distributed over four years to calm the situation, but the negotiations are still on-going.

In the US, where they're facing worker revolt for the low wages and bad working conditions but currently aren't unionized, they promised free frozen yoghurt and, Musk claimed this is his favorite, a Tesla electric pod car roller coaster.

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

#77

Post by yeppityep »

jensvdh wrote: post #25
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?

More and more companies are turning towards Canada after all the immigration bullshit the US government is pulling.

Throwaway for anonymity, but the quickly growing startup that I work for is opening a Toronto office because it will help us retain existing talent, and recruit talent on an ongoing basis, particularly if immigration to the US becomes more challenging.

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

#78

Post by FLGMwt »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #59
avaer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's about being upset -- it's about pattern recognition and learning from one's mistakes as a consumer.

In this case we are not really talking about a free consumer product, though. I would be surprised if Toronto's municipality would grant this development without having some guarantees of it being carried out, save for paying severe penalties.

Infrastructure projects can be a lot more expensive than even non monetized software projects.

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

#80

Post by lightbyte »

dannyr wrote: post #33
oculusthrift wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you realize they shut down like 80 percent of what they start? or atleast abandon it?

Where did you pull that 80% from? Or you just feel like it's 80%? Most of Google's big projects are still alive today. Search, Gmail, Android, GSuite, Chrome, Drive, AdWords, YouTube, etc. There are a few big projects that they shut down but most are smaller projects. Do we want Google to just launch products that they will keep alive indefinitely whether it succeeds or not? Should Google not have started its self-dr…

Google bought YouTube after it was already hugely successful. I don't think it makes the best example here.
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