Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 150 posts

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

#21

Post by rckrd »

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/

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

#22

Post by speedplane »

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 would trace it back to the early 2010s when Professors at University of Toronto (Geoffrey E. Hinton in particular) came up with many of the advances in training deep neural networks. That, along with the hype of deep learning, began a snowball of activity that put Toronto on the radar in a significant way.

I remember reading the below article. Prof. Hinton can probably claim quite a bit of credit for his city's successes. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/science/scientists-see-adv...

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

#24

Post by kayoone »

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.

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

#25

Post by jensvdh »

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.

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

#26

Post by cbhl »

theCricketer wrote: post #13

Out of curiousity and so we can all concretely imagine how Sidewalk Labs plans to transform cities, can someone explain what are the speicific changes and associated benefits in this new kind of city? It mentions, autonomous transit, ride sharing, cheaper housing (how?). Can someone paint a fuller picture of what will be new and how it will be beneficial. I'm not skeptical at all, in fact I'm very hopeful. I just wan…

The easiest way of making those things happen is a company town. The problem is that it's not financially sustainable, which becomes a problem if the company cuts spending or goes under (which has happened to a number of other company towns).

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

#27

Post by redthrowaway »

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 the finance & arguably tech centre of Canada. Great universities & access to VC cash, lots of startups. It also shouldn't be ignored that labour costs in Canada are less than half of what they are in the US, due to the weaker dollar, lower wages, cheaper medical insurance, and SR&ED credits that let you write off developer salary costs.

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

#28

Post by wungsten »

sanswork wrote: post #9
rubatuga wrote: post #7

Again, watch house and rental prices soar through the roof... Can't a poor student in Toronto get a break?

When that student wants property in the most prime space in the region probably not. Toronto already allows tons of new units(like this project) what more are you expecting from the city?

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.

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

#29

Post by rubatuga »

wungsten wrote: post #28
sanswork wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When that student wants property in the most prime space in the region probably not. Toronto already allows tons of new units(like this project) what more are you expecting from the city?

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.

exactly

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

#30

Post by idank »

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.

Fiber is still alive. Here's an announcement from last month.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/googl...

Post reply on HN