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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

#111

Post by scosman »

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/

Also, Hinton (and others) are launching a giant AI labs. Lots of government and partner funding (Google, Nvidia, etc).

http://vectorinstitute.ai/

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

#112

Post by moomin »

passive wrote: post #108
jtraffic wrote: post #90

"People thought it was crazy when Google decided to connect all the world’s information" I'd love to see a citation for this. I sort of doubt, at the moment, that anyone seriously said "Google is crazy for trying to connect the world's information." The implication is that I find the comparison to be a bit silly. The self driving car comparison is more accurate but much less informative: we still don't know how it wi…

Maybe it's poor phrasing, and the incredulity was about Google's ability to accomplish such a goal?

It's actually just dumb. It's not like Google ever pioneered any endeavour. They've merely done what Altavista and Yahoo did, only better.

Equally, they don't actually connect all the world's information. Just sections of it where it's profitable to do so.

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

#113

Post by wmil »

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?

- It's generally easier to bring in immigrants if there's a tech job waiting than in the US.

- The border is a barrier to moving to NYC or SF for a higher paying job. So salaries are lower.

- There are more agencies than product companies. Toronto has always had a lot of ad agencies, but the CAD has been trending down since 2013 without a major bump in salaries. So there are many ad agencies and contract app shops that take advantage of the spread.

So in general the Toronto tech scene is smaller and lower paying than either of those cities. But it's the best in Canada, so it attracts a lot of the local talent.

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

#114

Post by wmil »

pm90 wrote: post #102
52-6F-62 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to try and explain this to my girlfriend and her visiting sister last night. They're from Victoria and Vancouver and want us to move there. I can barely afford to live in Toronto on my salary, never mind Vancouver and the cost of moving across the country. To my knowledge -- in spite of the higher cost of living -- Vancouver-based software professionals don't make any more than they do here. That and most peopl…

Help me understand this but if Software Engineers can't afford to live in the city, then ... who can? Serious question.

It's basically a matter of who got there first. NIMBYism blocks new construction. But rent control keeps things cheap for long term residents. And if you bought a house 20 years ago you're in a good spot.

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

#115

Post by surfmike »

lhorie wrote: post #97
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?

I know of more than a few companies that are growing tech teams here in Toronto (while primarily having US-based clients) because average salaries are lower than in the US tech centers. My impression is that the tech workforce here is healthy for a few reasons: 1) the presence of tech giants such as IBM in Markham (plus Toronto's fame for multiculturalism and for having high quality of life) means it attracts a lot o…

I would definitely say U of Toronto and Waterloo are strong competitive advantages. Working in Silicon Valley I'm surrounded by Canadian engineers, many from one of those two schools.

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

#116

Post by Animats »

rayiner wrote: post #68
dannyr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also it pushed the broadband industry forward by providing competition. AT&T and Comcast stepped up their development of Gigabit Internet in the US.

Maybe. AT&T started deploying FTTN to major cities like Houston and Chicago in 2005-2006 (four years before Fiber). Their gigabit buildout was based on that original plan (which dates to SBC). Comcast has been on the DOCSIS upgrade treadmill for years. In the 7 years before Fiber they went from 8 to 100 upgrading to DOCSIS 2.0 then DOCSIS 3.0. Gigabit is another 10x jump over a similar time frame, based on DOCSIS 3.1…

There was also Verizon FIOS, which started in 2005, expanded to 5 million customers, then stopped expanding much after 2010. It apparently cost Verizon more than they'd expected.

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

#117

Post by afuchs »

verelo wrote: post #104
pm90 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Help me understand this but if Software Engineers can't afford to live in the city, then ... who can? Serious question.

It's not that they cannot, it is that they do not want to. Seriously, any software dev saying they "cannot live" on their salary is simply out of touch with the rest of the world. Not to say they should take a below market salary, but comparing a hyper-crazy salary of SF to Toronto is unreasonable.

For reference, the average salary for a software engineer, in Toronto, is close to $71,000 CAD/year. Taking into account the current CAD/USD exchange rate, brings it to approximately $52,000 USD/year.

Each country has different costs, taxes and otherwise, for both employees and employers. The effects of those costs have not been included with those figures.

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

#118

Post by asafira »

jtraffic wrote: post #90

"People thought it was crazy when Google decided to connect all the world’s information" I'd love to see a citation for this. I sort of doubt, at the moment, that anyone seriously said "Google is crazy for trying to connect the world's information." The implication is that I find the comparison to be a bit silly. The self driving car comparison is more accurate but much less informative: we still don't know how it wi…

I find it less silly and more just vacuous. Virtually every new idea has people who doubt it.

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

#119

Post by [deleted] »

kayoone wrote: post #24
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.

this is not software though, when its up and running you can't just go there and shut it down, so somebody else would probably take Googles place IF that happens. This is an independent company financed by Google and this would probably be their most important project, so it's not like Google shutting down Wave/Reader/whatever.

[deleted]

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

#120

Post by randomdata »

afuchs wrote: post #117
verelo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that they cannot, it is that they do not want to. Seriously, any software dev saying they "cannot live" on their salary is simply out of touch with the rest of the world. Not to say they should take a below market salary, but comparing a hyper-crazy salary of SF to Toronto is unreasonable.

For reference, the average salary for a software engineer, in Toronto, is close to $71,000 CAD/year. Taking into account the current CAD/USD exchange rate, brings it to approximately $52,000 USD/year. Each country has different costs, taxes and otherwise, for both employees and employers. The effects of those costs have not been included with those figures.

For reference on the cost side, the median home in San Francisco is $1.16M[1] (USD). The mean home in Toronto is $921K[2] (CAD; about $674K USD). Median figures are, unfortunately, not publicly provided in Canada, but given the nature of home valuations (especially in Toronto where you can find multi-million dollar mansions), a comparable amount is presumably quite a bit lower than that.

[1] https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values/

[2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/real-estate-toronto-tr...

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