We looked at the history of both these buildings in earlier posts, but we’re revisiting as both have seen more recent restoration, and we’ve researched the buildings a little more. On the right, the Canadian North Star (as it was last known) at 5 West Hastings is slightly younger than the Beacon Hotel to the west. We know that from an image we saw in an earlier post about the Palace Hotel, that pre-dated the Merchant’s Bank built in 1912, and recently restored. This Vancouver Public Library dates from 1920.

The image on that post (on the right) dates from 1899 and shows a two storey wooden building where the North Star was constructed. The Beacon, on the other hand had already been built, as a 3-storey building. That supported our earlier conclusion that when the 1899 news reported that “G W Grant would supervise the construction of a four storey block for B.B. Johnston & Co”, this was the building in question. In 1913, it was called “Drexel Rooms”, a name it kept until the 1980s, then later renamed the North Star Hotel or North Star Rooms, a single room occupancy hotel. In 1978 the Province newspaper investigated conditions in the Downtown Eastside SROs. “The owners of the Drexel are very energy conscious. The lights in the halls are left off. Manager Lau Mack King turned them on the other day because he thought the visitor from The Province represented the provincial government.”

In 1999 the Carnegie Newsletter reported the building had been closed for maintenance and health violations. “Although there are at least 29 units in this hotel, few were rented out monthly and many were just plain unrentable. There were so many orders for repairs that it was impossible to count them all.” It was briefly squatted in 2006 in a protest about the lack of affordable housing, but was already in a dangerous condition. Soon after the back of the building collapsed, leaving the structure open to the elements.

In 2014 the Solterra Group applied for permission to renovate the building to provide 31 self-contained units, each with a bathroom and cooking facilities. Half the rooms are reserved for low-income residents (5 for tenants paying welfare rate) and another 13 rooms at the provincial rent supplement rate, locked in for 30 years

Harry Jones was almost certainly the developer of the Beacon Hotel, probably around 1898. His name is in the 1900 Street Directory as occupying the West Hastings Street building, and he was still paying for repairs as owner in 1922. Harry was from Liverpool, and was an early successful real estate developer. We don’t know when the fourth floor was added; he carried out $1,500 of work to a building on Hastings Street in 1905, but he owned several properties, so we can’t be sure which was involved, and the work probably cost more than that. The style adopted for the addition didn’t attempt to follow the Italianate curved windows of the third floor, but added larger areas of glazing. Initially the rooms upstairs were the Ramona Rooms, then the Pacific Rooms, and more recently (and notoriously), Backpackers Inn, “BC’s worst drug hotel”

The Beacon was one of a number of run down SRO hotels bought by BC Housing in the early 2000s, and has had two periods of restoration. Now run by PHS, it initially reopened in 2009 as a social housing building for individuals living with concurrent disorders. An array of programs are available to residents including regular community kitchen events, pancake breakfasts, and movie nights. The Beacon closed for renovations in August of 2014, and reopened again in September 2016.

Image sources: VPL and City of Vancouver Archives CVA 677-27

0962

While these are uncertain times, there’s lots of financial support available from the government to help you get through. We’ve asked award-winning financial journalist Laura Whateley, to give us an overview of what’s available, who’s eligible, and what you need to do next

There is no escaping that these are uncertain and scary times, especially when it comes to paying the bills. This is true whether you’re in a full-time job, now working from home or facing being furloughed and worried about what a recession could mean for your finances, or are self-employed, with no cash coming in as jobs are paused, indefinitely. 

Fortunately, there is some help out there, from both the government and finance providers, to tide you over for the coming months.

Here’s what you can apply for and how…

If you think you’re facing redundancy…

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which will be available from the end of April 2020,  but backdated to March 2020,  is designed to enable employers to “furlough” their staff if there is no work to do as a result of the pandemic. In other words, bosses can temporarily put you on a leave of absence but keep you on the payroll, instead of making you redundant. 

It’s best to speak to your boss or HR/People team if you think this could apply to you and you haven’t yet had this formally communicated to you. Furloughed staff are entitled to a grant of up to 80 percent of their monthly wage, up to £2,500 a month, for at least three months, backdated to March 1 2020.

Your employer will have to claim the benefit, via an online service, which will be available by the end of April, and then transfer it to you. They may then choose to top this up. Your employer should write to you confirming you have been furloughed, keep hold of this letter.

If you are self-employed…

The Self-employment Income Support Scheme will also pay 80 per cent of your income, up to £2,500 a month for at least three months if you earn no more than £50,000 a year trading profit as a self-employed person, and at least half of your income comes from self-employment. The money is a grant that you have to pay tax on.

The good news is you should get the grant regardless of whether or not you are still able to work. Unfortunately for those who are very newly freelance, this only applies to the self-employed who have submitted tax returns in the year 2018-2019, and doesn’t apply to those who have a limited company and pay themselves in dividends. The amount you get will either be based on the amount you took home in 2018-2019, or an average of the previous three years of your self-assessment returns.

There’s no need to do anything, if you are eligible you will be contacted soon, and invited to apply online though gov.uk (beware the inevitable scammers texting or emailing you claiming to be from HMRC, don’t trust them). The grant will be paid directly into your bank account in one instalment. The bad news is, you won’t get this until June.

If you have no cash…

For self-employed people who can’t wait that long, you can dip into your tax savings.

The government has agreed to waive the July 31 2020 self-assessment tax payment deadline so you don’t owe anything until January 31 2020, though of course you’ll still have to come up with the money, then.

Again, no need to do anything, you won’t be penalised as you would be normally for failing to pay this summer.

Or you could apply for universal credit…

If you are not eligible for the government schemes…

If you’ve only just become self-employed, or because you’ve already been made redundant, your options are sadly limited. 

Whatever your previous salary, if it has suddenly dried up you can apply for universal credit to cover both a lack of income and housing costs. The amount you will receive has been increased slightly, to £409.89 per month for single people aged over 25.  

The more significant increase is in the housing element of universal credit, which you can use to pay mortgage interest or rent. The local housing allowance rates have risen to cover up to 30 per cent of market rent in your area.

The problem with trying to claim universal credit is that you are not eligible if you or your partner has any more than £16,000 of savings, which self-employed people might if they are saving for their tax bill. Even if your savings are more than £6,000, how much universal credit you receive will be reduced.

You can check to see how much universal credit you might receive, and apply, at gov.uk. But be warned: a lot of people are trying to do this at the moment so the site is experiencing delays.

If you can’t work because you have Covid-19…

You may be eligible for statutory sick pay, though sadly it doesn’t amount to very much at £94.25 a week. The government has brought forward how soon you can receive it though, from day one of being ill, rather than the usual day four.

You need to ask your employer for this, and you will probably need proof, in the form of an isolation note. You can get one at 111.nhs.uk/isolation-note/

If you can’t pay your mortgage or your rent…

The government has asked banks to offer all borrowers a three month mortgage payment holiday, which means that if you are struggling to pay your mortgage right now you can put it on pause. You’ll still owe the money, and interest, but it will be added on to your overall loan, extending the time you have to repay. Do not just stop paying your mortgage, though. Make sure you agree the payment holiday with your bank first.

If you cannot afford to pay your rent, speak to your landlord immediately. Landlords should be entitled to a payment holiday on their buy-to-let mortgage, if their tenants are in financial difficulty. The government has extended the notice period for eviction to three months, too, so you cannot be kicked out of your home during the coronavirus outbreak for not paying rent.

If you’re a Zopa customer and worried about how coronavirus will affect your loan repayments, please see our blog for information on how we can support you through these challenging times.

Laura Whateley is a freelance writer and author of Sunday Times bestselling book Money: a user’s guide. She has written for a wide variety of publications including The Times, The Guardian, Grazia, Refinery 29, Elle and Stylist Magazine. All views are her own. 

The post Coronavirus: what government help am I eligible for? appeared first on Zopa Blog.

The debut of the audio/video receiver in the 1980s spawned the home theater industry and inspired millions of people to pack their dens with speakers. But these days, it seems the popularity of AV receivers has fallen somewhere below that of bedbugs and above that of Justin Bieber’s mustache. This is due in part to the rise of the soundbar, which promises better performance than you can get from your TV’s built-in speakers in an easier-to-handle, less room-encompassing package than a full-fledged home theater system.

“Outbreaks have sparked riots and propelled public-health innovations, prefigured revolutions and redrawn maps.” – The New Yorker, April 2020

“Nothing will be the same.” 

That’s the overwhelming takeaway I’ve heard from dozens of conversations I’ve had with C-suite leaders, physicians, policy experts and media professionals these past few weeks. 

When it comes to the business practices of large corporations, there’s no time to debate whether or when things might return to normal. If corporations truly stand for something – and nearly all of them claim to nowadays –  the time to prove it is right now, as the crisis deepens and consumers look to corporations to step up and lead. Companies that wait this crisis out will learn – quickly – that once loyal customers will readily turn to competitors who made it a priority to be in service during this extraordinary moment.

Communicating that message of service means marketing. With that in mind, here’s a list of fundamental truths given today’s media landscape:

• Context matters more than ever. Every customer is consumed with understanding the threat and implications of the pandemic. High quality, trusted information is critical.
• Given this new context, marketing messaging can and must shift toward communicating how a company is adding value to society and its customers. Companies must recognize the severity of our times – brand messaging becomes serious and information dense. 
• The majority of global marketers have frozen or cancelled their marketing plans, and all are struggling to identify and roll out relevant new messaging.  
• When those messages are ready, marketers will find that traditional vehicles for messaging have shrunk or disappeared, or seem frivolous and out of context. No NBA or MLB, no Olympics, no live entertainment, and most advertising-driven television production has been suspended. 
• Stuck inside and online, consumers are glued to news outlets, and have retreated to streaming video for escape – and the lion’s share of those services are ad free. Those with advertising models (Pluto, Roku, etc) have previously been viewed as nascent and unproven. This will change, but at present the connected TV sector lacks the inventory to satisfy the marketing needs of the world’s biggest brands.
• Pushing context-driven marketing messaging on audience-driven services like Instagram or Facebook Newsfeed will come across as tone deaf. Again, context is now king. Where can serious, service-driven marketing messaging find the right context?   

Turns out, there is a massive media channel that lives in a serious and information-dense context every minute of every day. This channel has nearly unlimited inventory, deep and consistent consumer engagement, and is eager for partnership with brand marketers.

This channel is called news. And if marketers are smart, they’ll realize that running their messaging in high quality news channels isn’t just good business, it’s good for society as well.

For decades, marketers have been eschewing journalism as a serious marketing channel, claiming that brands can’t be built adjacent to coverage of plane crashes, natural disasters, politics, or other staples of the news business. This misguided philosophy has led marketing agencies to create massive blacklists of terms like “Trump,” “guns,” and now, “COVID.” These lists direct tens of billions in programmatic advertising away from local and national news outlets, and toward “safer” channels like live sports on television and Facebook or YouTube online.  

But it’s time for that to change. Perhaps the most important element of society’s response to the global pandemic lies in the curation and communication of high quality information, and calling that truth to those in power. Who but journalists will hold the governor of Georgia to account for mistruths, or the President of the United States? This has always been the role of journalism – and despite decades of declining revenues, most news outlets are rising to the challenge. Traffic and engagement to news channels has skyrocketed since the COVID outbreak – at The Recount*, we’ve seen spikes of up to 10-20 times our normal viewership. 

It’s time for brands to rethink news as a marketing channel. This doesn’t mean brands should abandon their metrics of success – but forward thinking leaders in the industry have already proven that news channels can offer more engaged and receptive audiences. A friend and industry leading marketer (who prefers to not be named) has led the way in this regard, investing at least one in three of his media dollars in news channels last year. He tells me that not only are news audiences influential and affluent, they are five times more likely to recall advertising than general audiences, and six times more likely to engage with ads when they recall them.

Right now, we need more leaders like him to step up and support the news business. And it’s not just good business: journalists are keeping people informed at one of the most important and perilous times of our history. As our finest corporations bend to the work of finding ways to be in service to their customers, they can and should partner with the one media channel that has been committed to serve the public since its inception: Journalism. 

###

*Yes, this post can be seen as self serving, and I’m fine with that. I’m convinced that the thesis is sound regardless of my position at Recount Media.

Get the book.

A very fine discussion of the way Christianity won the intellectual and political competition in the lands that would become Europe, defeating Judaism and the pagan establishment. It’s an interesting story, well (and adventurously) told here. What I miss, though, is a sympathetic engagement with the beliefs of Northern Europe — the people we would know as Vikings — and perhaps with whatever the Slavs believed.

• A World Full Of Gods: The Strange Triumph Of Christianity
• Jewish Comedy: A Serious History
• The Pumpkins Of Disaster

I wrote to console a colleague who lost his job this week. He asked, “Are you doing OK, too?” I sent an honest reply; he says it should be a blog post.

Yes, for most public-facing values of OK. I’m fine working from home. I’m cooking a lot. This week the code has been garbage, but I’m distracted and breaking in a new Catalina machine. The code will come.

But not being able to help is driving me nuts.

When I was a kid, I had a running argument with my uncle Fred. Also with my Dad, but fathers are complicated so let’s stick with Fred. Here’s Fred on Saipan (center):

The Fred I knew was a crusty, gruff old surgeon who was not shy of laying down the law, and his chief law was that anyone who could be a physician ought to be one. My family was very medical: my grandparents, physician and nurse, met on an Indian reservation where they were working in the early 20s; uncles Fred and Li and Mike and Tom were doctors, my dad was a doctor, aunt Hazel was a nurse.

No one in my generation went to medical school.

I never really regretted that. But I have spent a career building tools for research, tools to help people make sense of a crisis and to make the right decisions. I thought it was significant work, more rigorous than medicine, more elegant, and with broader reach.

It was all a mistake: people don’t want a better handle on the data, they just want to win the next election.

Even so, I could be doing something slightly useful. I have some hardware chops — not good enough for design anymore, but plenty for assembly. I know my way around a machine shop — old-style, not CNC, but then again I could adapt pretty damn fast because some of my grad school work laid foundations for programming these things. I could assemble ventilators from a kit or on an assembly line. I could do QA or train new assembly techs. I could write briefing papers and backgrounders. I could recruit a small army of engineers and technicians.

Hell: for the next eight weeks, all medicine is going to be one disease. I could be a highly-specialized nurse in — what — 80 hrs of training? So one week. Not ideal, not desirable, and (since I’m 64) risky, but we’re going to have a lot of dead physicians and nurses to replace by early May. As far as I know, nobody’s training the stopgaps. That’s the way you drive the case fatality rate from 1.3% to 7%: ask Bergamo.

But I can’t. The local politicians here are in charge of everything real, they hoard information, and they’re doing absolutely nothing. Nothing! I’m not even sure they understand the catastrophe that’s almost surely coming; I send them the papers but it does no good.

And, as you see, it’s making me a little nuts.

Have you been good to your customers? They will stand by you now. Have you been mean? Then don’t be surprised when they desert you in your time of need. That’s the schmuck deficit. Payback is a bitch. Many of the companies, large and small, that I deal with regularly are hurting right now. I’m … Continued

The post Coronavirus reveals the schmuck deficit appeared first on without bullshit.

No doubt educators are being flooded with advice on how to teach online in a crisis. I'm trying not to add to this deluge, but also to highlight tose articles that are genuinely worthwhile (at least in my own opinion). This is one. Kara Newhouse draws on the expertise of Alex Shevrin Venet, who facilitates professional development on implementing trauma-informed practices. The four priorities (pointedly not 'strategies') are predictibility, flexibility, connection and empowerment. Each responds to something trauma can disrupt or take away entirely, and which are important to well-being and resiliance. It's a well thought-out presentation

Another wonderful image from Diane Sampson of a  British cars cargo from the SS “Mostun” Vancouver January 24, 1959 . This is from the Vancouver Archives Collection.

The Mostun was from Belfast and travelled a route from Belfast to Chemainus on Vancouver Island. In the photo  a Morris Oxford Estate is beside a Riley One Point Five , with a  Hillman Husky and Hillman Minx sedans behind.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s British cars were the first to market a small car that was economical as well as reliable. That market was eventually replaced by Japanese cars in the late 1960’s.

The vehicles often had their wheels removed and stored inside the car, and then packed in wooden crates. This method allowed for more cars to be packed into the boat’s hold. There is a story of a ship fire in Vancouver harbour on the ship Dongeday in 1952 that was fuelled by the wooden crates. The City’s fireboat responded and got the fire out, but unfortunately also doused the cars with a whole lot of saltwater.

Surprisingly 22  of these waterlogged and damaged Austin automobiles were dumped into Burrard Inlet near Howe Sound. A customs officer oversaw the operation of these vehicles being loaded on a barge minus batteries and tires and then winched into the water.

Of course Vancouverites saw the opportunity, and a tugboat crew was found dragging the seafloor trying to find the vehicles. A story in The Sun admonished “The legal situation is ticklish. The cars have paid no duty…and ownership is still vested with the company that had them dunked.”

You can read more of this story on Jeff Peek’s “Austin Overboard” blog entry here on Haggerty.com

Images: VancouverArchives, JewishMuseum.ca, Haggerty.com

The post Navigating the COVID-19 Disruption appeared first on Innosight.

I started with The Beatles song In My Life:

There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone, and some remain

All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead, and some are living
In my life, I’ve loved them all

Walking across the street from 100 to 101 this morning, I remembered coffee shops and libraries and bookstores and friends’ houses and the forest and the beach and the movies.

Other places.

Remember ‘other places?’

Printed in 30 pt. Futura Medium (with its odd question mark), in red, on unbleached heavy card stock from Yu Yo in Halifax. Limited run of 32.

Email me if you’d like me to pop a copy in the mail to you.

I argue that if instead of doubling down on institutional e-learning we drew on the many lessons the wider internet has offered us over the years, we would be in a much better position to respond to the immediate needs of the crisis. Some responses to this discussion: Dean Shareski, Learning Hasn't Changed. Jim Groom, After this there will be no more good clean online fun.

Among those who survived the 1918 Spanish flu:

• Raymond Chandler
• Wait Disney
• Lillian Gish
• David Lloyd George
• Franz Kafka
• Edvard Munch
• Georgia O’Keeffe
• Mary Pickford

Also on the list: Woodrow Wilson, President at the time, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who went on to become President.

I think it's kind of important to record what our daily activities are as this pandemic rages the globe. Even though it's super boring, I bet it'll still be interesting to read some day, maybe even informative. Maybe my daughter will look back at it 50 years from now, as a new pandemic rages the globe. (Make sure to put on masks right away, kiddo. You don't look stupid, you're just ahead of the curve).

It's a great time to get some home projects done. I guess. We're over 10k deaths now in the US. I'll just throw that stat out there.

Right, home projects. I already work from home, but it's hard to get programming done while I'm also watching Madeline. So when she's done with worksheets or anything that she can basically do with minimal help, we'll use the leftover time to do house projects. Most recently, I finished putting up the fascia for our deck (which was put on hold last November because of weather). The handrail posts are up as well and they look pretty good. We just need to order the actual handrails and then we'll be all set. The garden is being de-weeded as well when the days are nice. Madeline planted some seeds in her section of the garden, but she can't remember where exactly.

The apple tree seedlings are coming along, but we've lost 2 out 6. I think at least 4 will make it.

Since rock climbing isn't happening anymore, I've been looking at ways that we can keep in shape while not getting any vertical milage. I have a box of climbing holds, I just need to figure out to build a little bouldering wall. This is proving to be kind of difficult- we have high ceilings in a couple of spots at our house, but not necessarily where we'd want a climbing wall. I'd like to build one in the shed, but we already have things in the shed so where will they go? (I should get another shed obviously).

We do have a retaining wall that's 8' at one spot! It won't take artificial climbing holds, so I've been experimenting with using construction adhesive to glue actual real rocks to it. So far so good- but it takes a couple of days for the glue to cure. When I'm done it'll be about 60' of traversing, which we can use to keep up endurance. It's actually usable now without any holds, but what's fun about that?

I'm starting to run a little more, and I'm trying to do 100 pull-ups every other day. I'll need at least one rest day between big sets to remain (hopefully) injury free- chronic tendonosis is pretty common in climbers and I'm certainly no exception.

Madeline's spring break is officially this week- but we're obviously just sitting at home. Schooling continues with some helpful worksheets and such from the school district. Google Classrooms starts up next week which will certainly be interesting. WA announced today that schools will be closed for the rest of the school year. I feel pretty bad for Madeline, as she's an only kid and doesn't have anyone her age to goof off with. I probably feel worse for her than she actually feels. I know she misses friends but is actually doing better than I thought she would.

Madeline is still obsessed by Zelda BOTW, continuously asking me questions and if I have discovered various objects or places yet.

Kirstin's hospital is still super short on masks. She's picked up some extra days since our previous plans for this week were canceled.

Family members are losing their jobs.

Omni laid off a number of folks last week, so that was a kick in the pants. Of the ten laid off, two I play Destiny with regularly (Kristina and Brian), Mark and Joel seem to have always just been floating in my circles, and Brent I've been friends with since the summer of 2003. Remember to support your indie companies by investing in their products!

Every night at some point, I find myself blindingly furious at our science-ignoring administration and anyone who excuses them.

Another week goes by with many more to come.

Don’t leave ideation running in the background of the community, drive people to it during fixed time periods.

Many companies are disappointed by the quantity and quality of ideas they receive from members. This is because they launch an ideation tool and leave it running for any members to suggest any idea at any time.

Instead of getting a good set of ideas, they often get something which better resembles a list of complaints (isn’t every complaint also an idea of what to improve?).

A better approach is to run specific ideation campaigns for a short time period.

Take a specific feature every few months and give members only a week to suggest their best ideas. In week two let members vote on which ideas they like best. In week three you select the top 3 ideas for your panel of judges to determine the winner.

You will find you get a lot more ideas and a lot better ideas if you limit when members can suggest ideas and make it more of a competition.

Don’t just leave your ideation tools running in the background.

Aktuell ist wieder ein günstiger Zeitpunkt, Office 365 Home für sechs Personen zu kaufen. 1 TB Speicher für jeden bei OneDrive, dazu Office auf PC, Mac, iPad und Smartphone. In zwei Wochen wird daraus automatisch Microsoft 365, mit zusätzlichen Funktionen. Absolter No-Brainer.

More >

I'm not a product reviewer, and I don't usually write reviews, especially when there are real experts like Matt Miller of ZD-Net on mobile devices, or ex GigaOm'er Kevin Tofel when it comes to all things Chromebook, but after less than 24 hours of using my new Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, I have to say, having now owned and still owning and using as many as six different Chromebooks since their earliest days, this is by far the best one I've ever owned. And given I still own a Google Pixelbook, and for many months it was, and has been, my primary day to day computer, at home, and more importantly, on the road, I always figured finding something better would be hard to beat.

Well that day has come. While it's likely you can find more in depth reviews at Wired, Engadget and other mass audience sites, the real reviews will come from people Kevin's About Chromebooks and Chome Unboxed, two sites that really take the time to dig into the inner workings of Chromebooks. this

1. Screen-It's bright. Really bright. It has true to life colors and great contrast between them. It's about as sharp as anything I've used on my lap or desk. To make a comparison, it's akin to when SONY introduced Triniton to color TV sets and distanced themselves from all the competition.
2. Audio-I love music, and on the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook I get really awesome sound, that's both clear and rich. For conference calls and phone calls on ZOOM, UberConference or via Dialpad, Hangouts, Messenger, etc. audio is clean, clear, crisp.  I've yet to connect a Bluetooth headset or speaker, but that's for today.
3. Video-For YouTube, Vimeo, Showtime, YouTubeTV and more streaming video the clarity, sharpness and depth of field was there. It was as good as any laptop to date and seemed brighter when watched in normal room lit daylight.
4. Keyboard Travel--this is where I'm really excited. The size and dimensions of the keyboard are perfect for me. I'm mostly a touch typist and grew up with typewriters, first standards, then electric (can you remember the IBM Selectric or Smith Coronas?). As a result muscle memory has me fighting on so many of the 11" and 12" and 13" inch keyboards as my hands are used to wider keyboards. With the Galaxy Chromebook, my fingers are flying across it.
5. Browser Speed-It's fast. Pages load faster than on my Mac Book Pro. Caching seems to be typical for Chrome 80. 
6. WiFi-I've run speedtests a few times day and night. On my Xfinity gigabit connection I've seen over 460 megs down and the usual 35-40 megs up. The download is the fastest of any PC in my house, wireless. I'll need to test with a wired connection sometime today.

I've installed my usual suspect of plugins, extensions (actually, it happened automatically, one of the perks of Chome 0r curses depending on your viewpoint) and nothing seemed to go wonky. Slack, in the browser is faster than in the app, and I've opened less apps than on my Pixelbook and yet I don't seem to be missing any functionality so far. Beyond that, setup is virtually, all done. For those not technically enlightened, the Chromebook remains the easiest device to set up and maintain, much like a Mac Book Air is.

Bottom line. The Galaxy Chromebook is not cheap at $999.00. It's not for everyone, but it is for those who spend long hours on the keyboard, working from home, on airplanes, at coffee shops or anywhere who need a power packed, cloud based PC.  My guess is somewhere along the way, a DELL, Acer or Asus will be released with better specs, performance or looks, but as a Chromebooks go, this is just about the best you'll find today, price aside.

The current cover of the New Yorker, titled “Lifeline.”

Here’s my version – an image taken on March 17, 8 pm, on Swanston Street in Melbourne:

This courier – equipped with bike (maybe electric), smart phone and custom backpack – was one of many on the main street of Melbourne’s CBD that night.  It’s easy to understand why they’ve become a vital link between restaurants that can provide only takeout and customers sequestered at home.  They too are front-line workers, and their bicycles declared essential.

I have a hunch that, like our use of online communication, their employment will expand, their vehicles will innovate, their uses proliferate, and afterwards they will become an expanded part of the local economies of our newly reconsidered cities.

With notes on microphones, Apple’s Magic Keyboard, laptop stands, and my [gasp!] new email client, MailMate.

Suddenly everyone’s working from home. Ours isn’t that big — in particular, only one office — and there are three other people working or studenting from it, so instead I’ve been using our boat. It’s cramped but scenic. As the number of weeks that I’ll be doing this stretches out into the unknowable future, there’s a chance for geek accessorization! I believe that in these days those of us who still have incomes should make a little effort to spread it around, especially when it might boost our productivity a bit, or anyhow our morale.

Audio

My job involves meetings every day. I viscerally loathe headphones after the first hour or so; in my tiny boxy office at work I have decent audio and a big ugly Shure MV51 mike that I don’t love; its aesthetic is brutalist and it doesn’t work well with Amazon Chime echo cancellation, so I often have to do the fast-finger unmute/mute when I want to talk.

For the boat I got an MV5 which is smaller, prettier, and plays nicer with Chime. Highly recommended.

The boat has a stereo that while lousy includes Bluetooth, so I send the Mac audio there. The speakers in the cabin ceiling are shitty but still better than those on the ancient 2015 MBPro I’m nursing along until corporate starts shipping the new 16" with the good keyboard. Speaking of which….

Keyboard

I have a decent little Dell 24" 4K outboard monitor and I was just parking the laptop in front of it and using its keyboard and trackpad. And this wasn’t terrible but I was really short on desk space for tea and snacks and phone and notepad.

I’ve been using and liking Apple outboard keyboards forever so I got a “space grey” Apple Magic Keyboard and wow, it was good before but it’s better now. There’s no longer a distinction between wired and Bluetooth, they’re all wireless now, but come with a USB for charging.

To set it up you plug in the USB and by the time you look at the screen there’s a popup saying “Bluetooth keyboard paired kthsby.”

The key travel and feel are perfection, and it’s quiet, which I like and is basic courtesy in a person who lives in videoconferences.

There’s one awful flaw though, which I discussed in 2008: The keyboard intelligently includes big phat arrow keys and the Home/End/Delete cluster, but stupidly insists on having the numeric keyboard, of interest only to accountants. I regret the waste of scarce desk surface.

Stand

I have two problems with the Mac being on the desktop. First, chronic neck pain from a lifetime of looking down at laptops. Second, everybody I teleconference with gets a view featuring my grizzled neck and chin. So I went looking for a stand and, on the Wirecutter’s recommendation, bought a Roost. It’s a really slick piece of design.

But take a moment and look at the enclosed instructions. I first unfolded them late at night in dim lamplight and thought they were glyphs scrawled in blackened blood by a giant tentacle on the vast walls of R’lyeh; words no human throat could form, the sound of which would rip men’s minds to bleeding shreds.

I’d failed to notice the instructions until I had figured out the device, which is easy enough. Just as well, my R’lyehian is weak.

Email

At work, the server is (I think) Exchange, and you can use more or less any client that can talk to it. I started with Outlook but quickly found the Office aesthetic soul-crushing. Then I used Mail.app for a while, but it’s just slooooow. Then I moved over to Outlook Web App and yeah, that Outlook flavor, but it’s freakishly fast. (There’s this thing called a Web browser where all you need to refresh is what the human is looking at, and OWA takes good advantage.) But the composer is lame and I had to refresh too often, losing the speed advantage.

So a smart person at work recommended MailMate, saying it was “Quirky but fast and powerful” which I’d say is fair: As fast as OWA. I’m only a few days in but I’m not going back. Every single time I’ve thought “I want to make it do X” it’s turned out that there’s a nice straightforward way to get there.

One particular feature I love: It’s easy to turn off the red unread count in the Dock icon, which is a productivity plus: I want to pick the time, unprompted, when I turn my attention to my email.

I occasionally get a little lost navigating through deeply nested email threads (when something goes viral on the Amazon Principal-Engineers mailing list, you’re way into spaghetti territory). But I assume I’ll get the hang of it.

Boat as a Mac accessory

It’s not a big boat, just over 24' in length; so I’m cramped; there is exactly one place to sit, with very limited scope for squirming. There’s no HVAC system run by Other People keeping the temperature controlled.

But; it’s a treat to be down by the water (roughly here). I’m hyper-aware of each day’s changeful weather story. I perceive the passage of seasons with microscopic precision as the sun’s path changes week to week and I adjust curtains to dodge the dazzle.

I have a 25-minute bike commute that puts opening and closing punctuation around the day.

I get visits from seals, cormorants, mallards, crows, and gulls, plus there are two eagles nesting in a nearby tree.

I have a little burner to make tea on, a tiny fridge for my sandwich, and a hard narrow berth for those irresistible nap attacks.

I’m fully aware that all this is down to my decades-long run of good luck, and that I’m once again enjoying hyperoverprivilege.

There is a lot of information about engineering productivity out there. No one says it’s easy, but it can be downright difficult to turn the practices you hear about into plans you can put into action. What follows is an example of how we can create an actionable plan to increase our productivity.

Let’s define engineering productivity as how effectively your engineering team can get important and valuable work done.

• How do you determine important and valuable work? — goals and objectives.
• How do you effectively get work done? — remove wasted time and effort from the delivery cycle

Goals, Planning, and Prioritizing

If productivity is an organizational goal, you need to make sure people understand why and how it affects them. You need to communicate the message over and over in as many venues as possible. The more developers understand the goals and the direction, the more engaged they’ll be with the work.

Engineering teams should try to set ambitious goals, focused through the lens of the team’s mission statement. We also try to create measures for defining success — yes, this is the OKR framework, but any goal or strategy planning can be used. We try to keep goals (objectives) and measures (key results) from being project to-do lists. Projects are tasks we can use to move the measures. Goals are bigger than projects. 

Engineers need to clearly understand the importance of their work. Large backlogs of work create decision fatigue about what work to prioritize. Without planning and prioritizing, we can end up with teams that aren’t aligned — the opposite of productivity. Use your goals, even the high-level organizational goals, as a guide to prioritize work.

Removing Wasted Time and Effort

A great resource for exploring engineering performance is the book Accelerate. Based on years of research and collected data (State of DevOps reports), the book sets out to find a way to measure software delivery performance — and what drives it. Some important measures include:

• Lead Time: time it takes to go from a customer making a request to the request being satisfied.
• Deployment Frequency: frequency as a proxy for batch size since it is easy to measure and typically has low variability. In other words: smaller batches correlates with higher deploy frequency and higher quality.
• Time to Restore: given software failures are expected, it makes more sense to measure how quickly teams recover from failure.
• Change Fail Percentage: a proxy measure for quality throughout the process.

Each of these measures could be a goal we want to focus and improve. Each measure has an impact on our ability to deliver software faster with better quality. Let’s also call-out that these measures are somewhat overlapping and interdependent.

Creating an Action Plan

Picking a Goal

As an experiment, let’s take one, Lead Time, and see how we could brainstorm ways to improve it. In a different favorite book, The DevOps Handbook, we’re presented with ways to effect change in Lead Time. A short summary that does not do justice to the depth presented in the book:

• Reduce toil with automation
• Reduce number of hand-offs
• Find and remove non-value time
• Create fast and frequent feedback loops

Let’s think about what’s involved between filing a ticket to start work — to delivering the work to the end user? Many different tasks and activities happen within this cycle. This becomes the scope we can work within. Some high-level things come to mind:

• Designing
• Coding
• Reviewing
• Testing
• Bug Fixing
• Ramping
• Monitoring

Picking Measures

We should be thinking about ways to measure success and failure of these activities. This should be independent of the work we intend to undertake. We can draw upon the pain and stumbles that have happened in the past. Finding good measurements can be a very hard process itself. Let’s not be unrealistic about our expectations on manual processes — we’re only human and people make mistakes. Think about ways to make it easy to succeed and hard to fail:

• Find more defects in pre-release than post-release: We’re always going to have bugs, but let’s try to find and fix more of them before releasing.
• Reduce the times a project gets bumped to next release: This happens a lot and for many different reasons. We should be better at hitting the desired timeline.
• Reduce the time it takes people to be exposed to a feature release: It can take days or week for people to “see” new features appear in the apps when ramping a feature flag. This also makes A/B testing painful.
• Reduce the times a feature flag is rolled back: Finding problems after we ramp a feature in production is costly, painful, and slows the release of the feature.
• Reduce time to detect and time to mitigate incidents: We’ll always have breaking incidents, but we need to minimize the disruptions to people using the product. Minutes, not days.
• Reduce amount of non-value time: It’s hard to say “code should be reviewed in X minutes”, or “bugs should be found in Y hours”, but it’s easier to identify dead-time in those activities.

Brainstorming Projects

With our objective and measures sketched out, let’s think about the activities and tasks we want to change. Some are manual. Many involve multiple teams. There are a lot of hand-offs. Let’s create smaller affinity groups based on the tasks and activities using the framework.

Reduce toil with automation

• Fast and continuous integration/UI testing
• Canary monitoring and alerting
• Simple hands-off deployments
• Easy low risk feature ramping

Reduce number of hand-offs by keeping cross-functional teams informed and involved

• Spec and requirement generation
• Test plan generation and updates
• Pre-release testing setup

Find and remove non-value time, usually the gaps between stages

• Fast edit/build/test cycles for developers
• Timely code reviews
• All code merges ready for QA next day
• File new defect tickets ASAP
• Prioritized pre-release defect tickets
• Merging green code

Create fast and frequent feedback loops

• Timely code reviews
• Fast and continuous integration/UI testing
• All code merges ready for QA next day
• File new defect tickets ASAP
• Fast, short feature ramps
• Canary monitoring and alerting

This level of grouping is perfect to start brainstorming actual project ideas. We’ve started at an organization-level objective (Increase engineering productivity), focused on a contributing factor (Lead time), and created a nice list of projects that could be used to affect the factor. This is important — we’re not focused on a single large project! We have many potential small, diverse projects. This dramatically increases the probability that we will succeed, to some degree. A single project is an all-or-nothing situation and lowers your probability of success. Most projects fail to complete, for one reason or another.

We also see that some idea groups appear multiple times. This allows us to leverage work to create impact in more ways.

If you take anything away from this post, I hope it’s that improving engineering productivity is an actionable goal. We can be systematic and measure results.

Accelerate and The DevOps Handbook cover a lot more than what I’ve presented here. The information on organizational culture and its effects on performance are also very enlightening. I’d recommend both books to anyone who wants to learn more about ways to improve engineering productivity.

Surprisingly, people like the new Chromium-based Edge browser.

According to data from NetMarketShare, as reported by Bleeping Computer, Microsoft’s revamped web browser has surpassed Mozilla’s Firefox to take second place for market share in March. NetMarketShare puts Edge at almost 7.6 percent of the global browser market share, just ahead of Firefox’s nearly 7.2 percent.

While the numbers are a far cry from Google Chrome’s 68.5 percent market share, it’s impressive that Edge climbed to second place in the fewer than three months it has been available.

As Engadget points out, it’s not hard to figure out why. For starters, Edge enjoys the position of being the ‘default’ browser for Windows 10. Browsers typically get a boost from being the default as many people just use what’s there and don’t switch out browsers.

However, Microsoft’s old Edge browser also had a poor reputation. Thanks to compatibility issues from running on Microsoft’s own engine, a lack of extensions and overall worse performance, old Edge didn’t get used for much other than downloading other browsers.

What sets the new Edge apart from the old Edge is that Microsoft switched to using the Chromium engine. Chromium is the open-source foundation for Google Chrome, as well as many other browsers like Opera and Brave. The upside to this is that Edge now feels much more like Chrome, and benefits from extension and website compatibility as well.

Unfortunately, there’s also a downside. Web developers are already inclined to build for Chrome because of its massive market share. As more Chromium-based browsers emerge and gain market share, it tightens Chromium’s grip on the web and further discourages development for other browser engines. That means Firefox, which is an excellent, privacy focussed browser, as well as Apple’s Safari, will suffer.

Source: NetMarketShare Via: Bleeping Computer, Engadget

The post Microsoft Edge passes Firefox, claims second-most browser market share appeared first on MobileSyrup.

The Ontario government is temporarily banning Airbnb and other short-term rentals amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new order has been issued under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act. Journalist Allison Smith posted a copy of the emergency order on Twitter.

It states that if hosts do not comply with the new emergency law, then they could face fines of up to $100,000. The ruling notes that as of April 5th, short-term rentals can only be “provided to individuals who are in need of housing during the emergency period.”

It’s important to note that the ruling does not apply to hotels, motels or students residences across the province.

Airbnb has provided MobileSyrup with a statement noting that “leisure travel should not occur right now and we have encouraged our host and guest community to follow all restrictions.”

The company also says that it’s “glad theProvince of Ontario recognizes the situations where short-term rentals remain an available resource during this crisis, including for frontline responders, other workers requiring isolation and those sheltering in place during this crisis.”

Airbnb recently announced a new global initiative that will provide free or subsidized housing to healthcare professionals amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The company notes that this initiative will not be impacted by the new ruling.

Amid the ongoing pandemic, Airbnb has extended its no-charge cancellation policy. It has also committed $250 million (about $352 million CAD) USD to reimburse hosts with cancelled bookings. It’s unclear if hosts who are being impacted by the temporary ruling will receive assistance from the company.

Via: @QueensParkToday

Update 06/04/20 4:35pm ET: The article was updated to include a comment from Airbnb.

The post Ontario government temporarily bans Airbnb and other short-term rentals amid COVID-19 appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Huawei aims to ship roughly six million medical masks to help Canadians deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.

So far, the Chinese company has already shipped a million masks, 30,000 goggles and 50,000 pairs of gloves, according to a report from the The Globe and Mail. The publication isn’t identifying where it received this information.

Approximately 200,000 of these masks are the heavily sought after N95 masks that are needed by critical medical staff.

The tech giant’s gift comes at an interesting time for Canada. The company is currently in a fight to be allowed to install its 5G equipment on Canadian soil. Canadian authorities also arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO, in 2018.

The Globe and Mail outlines arguments stating that Canada should pay for the masks to remove at least some of the goodwill the company might gain from the donation, while others say we just need as many masks as possible.

Source: Globe and Mail

The post Huawei shipping millions of masks to Canada appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Analysts at IDC Canada predict that the COVID-19 pandemic will substantially impact the telecommunications services market.

The analytics firm expects there to be negative growth in 2020 before eventually rebounding in 2021, as noted in its latest report. IDC Canada predicts that there will be a decline of $2 billion CAD in revenue.

New stringent containment and lockdown measures across the country have led to a rapidly deteriorating economic outlook. The firm notes that recent forecasts indicate a steeper decline when compared to the financial crisis of 2008.

“The impact of the COVID-19 crisis represents the most significant deceleration in ICT spending growth Canada has experienced in modern time” said Lars Goransson, the managing director at IDC Canada, in the report.

Further, wireline voice services are expected to be hit the hardest by the virus in terms of the telecommunications sector.

“Although we predict all telecom market segments will show reduced revenue from the previous forecast, some positive factors will moderate the downturn such as the exploding need for conferencing, remote collaboration and increased broadband access,” the report notes.

Internet services are expected to be one of the most insulated markets during the pandemic. It’s interesting to note that although internet service providers are experiencing an unprecedented increase in consumption, higher usage does not translate to revenue growth due to the elimination or expansion of data caps currently provided by most carriers.

The report notes that to meet increased network capacity needs, service providers are likely upgrading their infrastructure to handle the bandwidth. The costs for these expansions will have to be recovered in 2021.

IDC Canada expects the telecom market to get back on track in 2021 if most businesses return to normal and people return to work. However, it’s important to note that nothing is certain because the duration of the pandemic is still unknown.

Source: IDC Canada

The post Canadian telecom market predicted to see $2 billion decline in revenue due to COVID-19: study appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Swedish motorcycle company CAKE has just announced a street-legal version of its highly stylish Kalk INK bike that rings in at $10,650 USD (roughly, 15,048 CAD).

The regular Kalk INK and the new Kalk INK SL are very similar and, at a glance, look identical. The difference is that the SL uses more rigid components since it’s likely going to spend most of its time on smooth roads.

It’s also got a left side mirror, an LCD display, a foot brake and a spot for your license plate. The bike’s top speed has also been boosted from 80 to 90 km/h so it can keep up with minimum highway speeds.

The bike is expected to begin shipping in July, but there is one big flaw that holds it back. When you’re driving at 70 km/h your range is only 35 km. You can stretch it to 86 km according to the bike’s WMTC-II rating. This rating is based on average riding conditions, but it probably includes little highway miles.

The battery takes roughly two and a half hours to charge in a standard wall outlet according to CAKE, but you can spend an extra $3,000 USD (approximately $4,200 CAD) for a second battery.

If you’re interested in the bike you can place a $200 deposit here and browse more specific specs.

Source: CAKE Via: Electrek

The post CAKE’s new electric motorcycle is street legal and roughly $15,000 CAD appeared first on MobileSyrup.