Rolandt

Changing Vancouver just posted a particularly graphic example of possibly the worst transition from good to bad architectural and urban design in the city’s history.  It happened in the West End after the zoning changes of 1956.

Here’s a house in 1956, the year before it was redeveloped. The building that replaced it is an 80 unit rental building designed by Peter Kaffka, called Barracca Court when it was built in 1957. 

The home was the work of Parr and Fee, seemingly the architects to the upper middle class in the city who favoured that Queen Anne elegance in their wooden ‘mansions.’  And then, in the decade after the ’56 rezoning, it and hundreds of others would be bulldozed for the concrete towers, of which Kaffka was the architect of many – essentially simple concrete boxes with punched windows, surrounded by parking lots, a bit of grass and minimal landscaping.  Modernism used to justify the least design and the highest return.

The real mansions, of course, would be built in Shaughnessy, to where the rich fled from the West End after 1909, after which their homes would be transformed into boarding houses.

… by 1940 it was listed … as ‘rooms’, a role it retained until it was demolished.  … in 1956 it was known as The Pillars, split into 7 apartments.

Here, of course, is the irony.  The houses of the rich became the homes of the poor, providing critical accommodation during the Depression and War, after which the concrete highrises provided accommodation for the new class of service and corporate workers in the post-war boom.  Today, the West End is still home for lower-middle-class renters, despite the rising pressures of affordability.

That wouldn’t have happened if it had been declared a heritage neighbourhood, its original housing stock preserved and renovated, and its population kept to a fraction of the 40,000 it now accommodates.

There are two common ways to look at marketing. One’s based on hacks. The other centers on value. I’ll describe each. (You’ll immediately know which you hold.)

The hacker approach is exciting. You automate your sales emails. You try to outsmart Google’s search algorithm. You make a video that might go viral. This mentality is seductive, as successful efforts have big pay-outs.

I love a hack as much as the next person. But, I find them impossible to replicate. My (few) successful hacks were lucky accidents. In every other instance, these attempts were time-consuming and resulted in nothing.

The value approach is slower. You talk to you customers. You build your website with accurate content and well structured metadata. You put client relationships over stunts. The value mentality is a commitment to service.

I’ve found success with the value mindset. In almost every instance, it’s led to repeat work, loyal customers, and more predictable cash flow. The only downside? It doesn’t feel like real marketing. This is because the value approach isn’t a game.

The value mindset represents a choice. It requires you to focus your energy on your customers. You learn who they are, and listen to what they need. You explain how your product/service can benefit them—and admit when it won’t. And (this is the important part): if they hire you, you keep the promises you made.

Like I said, the value mindset is slow. This means most marketers don’t have the patience for it. It demands that you practice the same habits every day. Often, it’ll feel like nothing’s changed. In time, though, you might find that your customers do all the marketing for you.

The post Hacks or Value? appeared first on Eric Karjaluoto.

I keep having to explain a principle I arrived at a few years ago when I realized the modern conservative movement is grounded almost entirely in a contrived sense of grievance, predicated on a false victimhood of its supporters. (That’s not to say some haven’t genuinely suffered some wrongs, but they consistently focus on imaginary ones instead.)

The clarifying moment for me in realizing how to deal with this was the stupidity of when right-wig media claimed Barack Obama was having a “hip hop barbecue” at the White House. Obviously, this met all of the signature tropes of such efforts: it was a lie, was a transparently racist dogwhistle, and featured absurdities demonstrating a profound cultural illiteracy — in this case, asserting that Common is a gangster rapper. Forsooth.

My conclusion then was simple: give them what they want. They’re going to accuse you of it anyway, at least do the right thing and give them a reason to pretend they’re victims. Eventually, Obama did have a Hip Hop BBQ of sorts, and it was glorious. What could the right wing media outlets do, except say “he’s at it again!” Who’s gonna pretend to get outraged twice?

Now, of course, there are limits. No matter how desperately the right may have craved Death Panels back then, we can’t give them the true version of that lie they created. But for the most part, if the fact-free media and its credulous supporters want to pretend they’re being wronged, we should follow improv rules and say, “Yes, and…” and be sure to double down.

If they said you had a Hip Hop BBQ, then you damn well ought to have one.

Dean Allen, a web pioneer and good man, has passed away. I've been processing the news for a few days and still don't know where to begin. Dean was a writer, who wrote the software he wrote on. His websites were crafted, designed, and typeset so well you would have visited them even if they were filled with Lorem Ipsum, and paired with his writing you were drawn into an impossibly rich world. His blog was called Textism, and among many other things it introduced me to the art of typography.

Later, he created Textpattern, without which WordPress wouldn't exist. Later, he created Textdrive with Jason Hoffman, without which WordPress wouldn't have found an early business model or had a home on the web. He brought a care and craft to everything he touched that inspires me to this day. As John Gruber said, "Dean strove for perfection and often achieved it." (Aside: Making typography better on the web led John Gruber to release Smarty Pants, Dean a tool called Textile, and myself something called Texturize all within a few months of each other; John continued his work and created Markdown, I put Texturize into WP, and Dean released Textile in Textpattern.)

Years later, we became friends and shared many trips, walks, drinks, and meals together, often with Hanni and Om. (When we overlapped in Vancouver he immediately texted "I'll show you some butt-kicking food and drink.") His zest for life was matched with an encyclopedic knowledge of culture and voracious reading (and later podcast listening) habits. I learned so much in our time together, a web inspiration who turned for me into a real-life mensch. He was endlessly generous with his time and counsel in design, prose, and fashion. I learned the impossibly clever sentences he wrote, that you assumed were the product of a small writing crew or at least a few revisions, came annoyingly easily to him, an extension of how he actually thought and wrote and the culmination of a lifetime of telling stories and connecting to the human psyche.

Dean, who (of course) was also a great photographer, didn't love having his own photo taken but would occasionally tolerate me when I pointed a camera at him and Om has a number of the photos on his post. There's one that haunts me: before getting BBQ we were at his friend's apartment in Vancouver, listening to Mingus and enjoying hand-crafted old fashioneds with antique bitters, and despite the rain we went on the roof to see the art that was visible from there. He obliged to a photo this time though and we took photos of each other individually in front of a sign that said "EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT." It wasn't, but it's what I imagine Dean would say right now if he could.

A couple of days ago on the Spreadsheet Journalism blog, I came across a post on UK Immigration Raids:.

The post described a spreadsheet process for reshaping a a couple of wide format sheets in a spreadsheet into a single long format dataset to make the data easier to work with.

One of my New Year resolutions was to try to look out for opportunities to rework and compare spreadsheet vs. notebook data treatments, so here’s a Python pandas reworking of the example linked to above in a Jupyter notebook: UK Immigration Raids.ipynb.

You can run the notebook “live” using Binder/Binderhub:

Look in the notebooks folder for the UK Immigration Raids.ipynb notebook.

A few notes on the process:

• there was no link to the original source data in the original post, although there was a link to a local copy of it;
• the original post had a few useful cribs that I could use to cross check my working with, such as the number of incidents in Bristol;
• the mention of dirty data made me put in a step to find mismatched data;
• my original notebook working contained an error – which I left in the notebook to show how it might propagate through and how we might then try to figure out what the error was having detected it.

As an example, it could probably do with another iteration to demonstrate a more robust process with additional checks that transformations have been correctly applied to data along the way.

Anyway, that’s another of my New Year resolutions half implemented: *share your working, share your mistakes(.

Google currently has two operating systems (OS) on the market — Chrome OS and Android — but the search giant is also unofficially working on a third unannounced OS called Fuchsia.

At the beginning of the year, Google added the Pixelbook as the official test device for its mysterious Fuchsia operating system. It took only three weeks before ArsTechnica was able to get the operating system up and running on a Pixelbook, Google’s recently released Chrome OS-powered laptop.

Taking a look at the lock screen, the time is placed front and centre, with an ‘X’ icon near the bottom right of the display. Tapping the X brings up shortcuts for ‘Wi-Fi,’ ‘Login’ and ‘Guest,’ but as of right now all of the links are broken. Moving past the lockscreen and onto the home screen, the time/date, Wi-Fi indicator and battery information are all found in the middle of the screen. Note that the card-based Armadillo user interface is still running on Fuchsia.

Below the Google Search bar and notification cards displays a contact’s a birthdays, how long it takes to get to a restaurant and Google Now-like cards. Tapping the Fuchsia logo at the top launches volume and brightness sliders, the airplane mode toggle, do not disturb and auto-rotate.

Apps or web pages opened appear at the top and users can move them around and open them up in split-screen mode.

Fuchsia is still its pre-alpha stages and many of the things seen will likely change.

ArsTechnica played with the unreleased OS last May and only was able to have it function on top of the Android OS. When the team showcased Fuchsia it worked more like an app than an actual operating system.

At the time it looked cool, it was completely card-based and had a multi-window system. However, it was mostly placeholder graphics and didn’t actually function.

Source: ArsTechnica

The post Here’s what Google’s Fuchsia OS looks like on the Pixelbook appeared first on MobileSyrup.

The 2018 KPMG Autonomous Vehicles Readiness Index (AVRI) shows Canada is well on its way to being ready for a world full of self-driving vehicles.

The AVRI looked at the key factors required for a country to meet the challenges of self-driving vehicles, with Canada ranking seventh in terms of country readiness.

In terms of methodology, the study examines the progress and capacity for adapting to autonomous vehicle technology. The AVRI evaluates each country on four pillars that cover topics like policy and legislation and infrastructure and consumer acceptance.

Variables included within these pillars were, the availability of electric vehicle charging stations, autonomous vehicle (AV) technology research and development, and the population’s acceptance of the technology.

In terms of AVRI’s infrastructure pillar, the report found that Canada’s successful testing of the 5G network has positively impacted our score.

Meanwhile, the technology and innovation pillar Canada received the highest possible score, “for industry partnerships, […] research and development hubs and AV technology company headquarters.”

The country also received maximum marks on government-funded autonomous vehicle pilots, due to Ontario’s permits for allowing AV testing on public roads. Over the course of 2017, Ontario issued seven permits to companies including Uber, Continental, Magna and QNX — a Blackberry subsidiary.

“Southern Ontario has a perfect ecosystem to support AV research and testing,” says Gary Webster the national leader of infrastructure KPMG in Canada, in a press statement.

“It is the fourth largest exporter of vehicles in the world, with manufacturing facilities for GM, Fiat-Chrysler, Ford, Toyota, Honda and their supply chains. Its Waterloo-Toronto Innovation Corridor includes research universities and technology companies, convincing Uber and General Motors to move jobs there.”

Below are the top ten countries prepared for autonomous vehicles:

1. Netherlands
2. Singapore
3. United States
4. Sweden
5. United Kingdom
6. Germany
7. Canada
8. United Arab Emirates
9. New Zealand
10. South Korea

The report also finds that a country’s economic development correlates strongly with how prepared the nation is for autonomous vehicles.

Additionally, it notes that prepared countries are more willing to regulate and mange autonomous vehicle development, have excellent roads, a mobile network infrastructure and a private sector focused on investment and innovation.

Find the full report here.

The post Canada is 7th most prepared country for self-driving vehicles: KPMG appeared first on MobileSyrup.

President Donald Trump announced his Fake News Awards yesterday. Many of them are, indeed, news reports that turned out to be wrong. Strangely, though, that’s not at all what Trump actually means when he says “Fake News” — or when he generates it himself. Breaking down the 2017 Fake News Awards Trump’s Fake News Awards … Continued

The post The strange thing about Trump’s Fake News Awards appeared first on without bullshit.

A patent filed by Samsung seems to suggest the smartphone manufacturer plans to one-up the iPhone X’s controversial ‘notch’ bezel by embedding the sensors and speakers directly into the screen.

The patent depicts a flexible OLED screen with strategically-placed holes for the camera, speakers, facial sensor et al. Such a design allows for a maximum allowance of screen real estate, omitting bezels entirely. Additionally, Samsung’s patent shows a hole for the home button as well, suggesting their new device will not use iPhone X-style gesture controls.

Some of the diagrams also display text automatically wrapping around the embedded elements, which is sure to assuage readability and visibility concerns. The device does seem to offer the same ‘cropped display’ setting that the X has as well. This allows users to display images and videos only in the middle section of the screen, an area untouched by the cutouts.

Samsung earlier announced that the chip being used in this year’s flagship S9 phone would offer “hybrid face detection,” which could point to further attempts to cement their own version of the iPhone X complete with Face ID and Animoji-like features.

Notably, the patent does show an alternate design incorporating a small notch for the camera, which causes the device to resemble the Essential Phone. Samsung also recently filed a patent for the Galaxy X, which seems be a re-imagined flip phone.

Reports suggest that Apple may be taking strides to shrink or remove the notch by decreasing the size of the iPhone X’s Face ID sensor. Could this mark the beginning of a race between the two tech titans to create the phone with the most screen real estate?

Source: LetsGoDigital Via: 9to5Mac

The post Patent indicates Samsung aims to one-up the iPhone X’s ‘notch’ by putting holes in the screen appeared first on MobileSyrup.

This blog has long railed against what in BC is called “P3” and in Britain “PFI”. My objection started with the observation that while private finance appears beneficial because the debt disappears from the government accounts, this is merely a book keeping legerdemain. The debt is still real, still gets paid off by us, and gets higher simply because the private sector cannot borrow at the same rate as the government. The interest on private sector borrowing is higher.

The Guardian headline today comes as no surprise.

Taxpayers to foot £200bn bill for PFI contracts – audit office
Cost of privately financing projects ‘can be 40% higher’ than using public money

This news comes hot on the heels of the Carillion debacle.

I had hoped that, by now, our new provincial government would have made some announcement on unwinding BC’s disastrous P3 initiative. If it has, I must have missed it. But then Mr Horgan seems as enamoured as Christy with Site C and LNG so I would not be at all surprised if he is not also dead keen on pumping yet of our money into these rip offs too.

Jeremy Corbyn is now committing the British Labour Party to abandoning outsourcing altogether.

I was going to suggest that, at the very least, BC adopt what most other countries now insist on – a public sector comparator, since I believe that, in most cases, the need for the private sector to make profits makes them uncompetitive against the public sector, but I must also insert a plea for some recompense against some of the more corrupt practices here such as insisting that we pay for electricity we do not need from private sector companies that are large contributors to the BC Liberal Party. If anything P3 – BC style –  has probably been worse than the UK PFI.

Farhad Manjoo, writing for The New York Times on the topic of tech addiction, interviewed Tristan Harris, who runs the Time Well Spent organization:

Mr. Harris suggested several ideas for Apple to make a less-addictive smartphone. For starters, Apple could give people a lot more feedback about how they’re using their devices.

Imagine if, once a week, your phone gave you a report on how you spent your time, similar to how your activity tracker tells you how sedentary you were last week. It could also needle you: “Farhad, you spent half your week scrolling through Twitter. Do you really feel proud of that?” It could offer to help: “If I notice you spending too much time on Snapchat next week, would you like me to remind you?”

Another idea is to let you impose more fine-grained controls over notifications. Today, when you let an app send you mobile alerts, it’s usually an all-or-nothing proposition — you say yes to letting it buzz you, and suddenly it’s buzzing you all the time.

Mr. Harris suggested that Apple could require apps to assign a kind of priority level to their notifications. “Let’s say you had three notification levels — heavy users, regular users and lite, or Zen,” Mr. Harris said.

The first idea sounded terrible until I remembered that, for a while, I also used Moment on the iPhone to understand my app habits and curb my Facebook addiction (it worked). I wouldn't want a tracking feature that shames users and makes them feel guilty ("Are you proud of that?" is precisely what should not happen), but something akin to RescueTime, discreetly integrated with iOS and built by Apple would be a welcome feature.

Deeper control over notifications is something iOS desperately needs at this point. I would be disappointed if a major overhaul of the notification framework and UI isn't in the cards for iOS 12. Android has offered notification channels for a while now; Apple should borrow the feature and a) allow developers to set different tiers for their apps' notifications and b) let users override them if a developer tries to be too clever about them. Notification levels on iOS would also be perfect for the Apple Watch: imagine if, without having to fiddle with Do Not Disturb, you could set some types of notifications to be displayed on the iPhone and only the most important ones on the Watch, with fine-grained controls in a unified, intuitive interface. I hope we see something similar this year.

→ Source: nytimes.com

• Read more about KPIs for APIs: How Metrics Change Over Time

Thanks to the new world of podcasting and online media – like Roundhouse Radio – it’s possible to have what journalists call ‘long-form’ coverage: extended, more in-depth discussion of complex issues.

Here’s an example: me, on our transportation future, including the arrival of ‘Transportation Service Providers’.

Join the interview at about 12:48.

Late on a foggy day in Vancouver.  A view over False Creek, Kits Point and the Maritime Museum.

Best viewed large — click to enlarge

Too bad, Vancouver

Amazon has announced its short-list for the new HQ 2.  Vancouver is not on the list.

Atlanta
Austin, Tex.
Boston
Chicago
Columbus, Ohio
Dallas
Denver
Indianapolis
Los Angeles
Miami
Montgomery County, Md.
Nashville
Newark
New York
Northern Virginia
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Raleigh, N.C.
Toronto
Washington, D.C.

Fresh from Las Vegas and CES, this week on News 1130 radio in Vancouver, I spoke about these items that I found while wondering the convention halls for Wired Wednesday with Ben Wilson:

• Raven: Connected Car System for any car (Made in Canada!) (source)
• Qoobo : A pillow with a wagging tail (source)
• Timebox Mini: a fresh take on the bluetooth speaker (source)

Listen here

The post Wired Wednesday – CES Edition: Raven, Qoobo & Timebox-Mini appeared first on johnbiehler.com.

First Thoughts on Last Jedi

The London Underground map was drawn by draftsman Henry Beck in 1931. Mr. Beck was working as an engineering draftsman in the London Underground Signals Office and drew up the iconic map in his spare time. He was 29 years of age when he produced the map that is instantly recognizable and has been in use for almost ninety years.

Londoners have a strong attachment to their underground and to their “tube” line. As reported in the Indy 100  Adzuna.com, a job search engine, came up with the idea of pinning salaries within a quarter-mile of  tube stations and depicting those on the tube map.

As Adzuna co-founder Doug Monro states “Londoners love to argue about whose tube line is the best, and in terms of pay the Waterloo & City Line takes top place in the commuting charts, with the Circle and Central Lines following close behind. Meanwhile, Victoria Line commuters may boast of frequent tubes and a speedy service, but this research conclusively shows jobs located along the Victoria Line route offer the lowest pay, proving the Victoria Line is not where the money is.” 

Salaries also decrease the  further a person travels outside the central core. But at the locations close to the Barbican, Monument, Bank, Cannon Street and St. Paul’s  salaries were over 50,000  British Pounds which is close to $86,000 Canadian dollars. Adzuna also created a map by tube line colour showing the average advertised salary available within a quarter-mile of each subway line’s tube stops. That graph is below.

Ever notice how your “Eureka” moments usually happen when you’re on the go and out of the office? It’s hard to find flow in a cubicle. And there’s a good reason for that. You’re sitting in a box. Next time you’re feeling stuck and your mind seems as blank as your screen, remember this: studies show body movement can unlock creative ways of thinking—no matter what kind of problem you’re trying to solve. Here’s how to use physical activity to get out of a rut and get your imagination in motion.

Talk with your hands

Body movements not only help us process old ideas, they help us create new ones. In fact, the simple act of gesturing with your hands can actually change your mind. Research shows that gestures facilitate new learning and evoke imagery, not only in the minds of the listener, but in the mind of the speaker as well. There’s even a field of research called “embodied creativity” devoted to studying how movement, gesture, and autonomic functions can shape our thoughts.

Try this: Next time you’re brainstorming, record a voice memo of yourself thinking out loud. On the first take, keep your hands in your pockets and close your eyes. On the second take, consciously use hand gestures as you speak. Compare the results to see if the gestures helped you generate more ideas or articulate your thoughts more eloquently.

Brainstorm in cursive

The expression “go with the flow” is thought to have originated as a metaphor for the movement of tides. Everyone has times when their energy is ebbing. So how do you ride it out until the flood returns? In their 2012 study, “Fluid Movement and Creativity,” Michael L. Slepian and Nalini Ambady note that “cognitive scientists describe creativity as fluid thought.” They found that fluid arm movement led to enhanced creative generation, remote associations, and cognitive flexibility.

Try this: Ditch the digital world for a while. Power down your devices and pick up a notepad. Set a timer for five minutes, and free associate ideas. Follow your first thoughts to find out where they’ll go—just keep the pen moving. You might be tempted to backtrack and perfect every phrase. Don’t. Just enjoy a few minutes of discovering ideas you didn’t know were hiding in your subconscious.

Keep your creative energy flowing with Dropbox

Exercise a better mindset

When you go outside for a quick jog or bike ride, do you ever feel a major upswing in your mood immediately after? Aside from the extra oxygen your workout provides, exercise boosts the production of endorphins, the neurotransmitters known to reduce stress and anxiety. But the benefits of exercise go way beyond mood improvement. Exercise affects brain chemistry, physiology, and neuroplasticity, and makes it easier for you to overcome uncertainty and take more risks. It can also help put you in a creative frame of mind.

Try this: Author Haruki Murakami says his daily regimen of running becomes a “form of mesmerism” that allows him to “reach a deeper state of mind.” He’s convinced that repetition is a key factor. So choose some form of exercise you like enough to do every day. Set aside 20 minutes before you start working, and make it as much a part of your routine as responding to email.

Improvise your next move

Bringing more movement into your daily life doesn’t have to mean sprinting on a treadmill, swimming laps, or spin class at the gym. Dr. Peter Lovatt, founder of the Dance Psychology Lab at University of Hartfordshire, discovered that dancing can actually help strengthen problem-solving skills. His research shows that improvised dance enables people with Parkinson’s disease to improve their divergent thinking skills. They theorized that dancing helps Parkinson’s patients create new neural pathways that work around blockages formed by a depletion in dopamine.

Try this: Studies show our creative energy starts to wane after 90 minutes. So instead of staring out a window when you hit a creative wall, take a break every hour and a half. Stand up, stretch your legs, and practice your Nae Nae ‘til you’re ready to get back to work.

Imagine new situations

Over the course of your lifetime, regular exercise helps increase the number of healthy young hippocampal cells. That’s important for creative problem solvers because the hippocampus is the part of the brain involved in improving our ability to imagine new situations. To envision the future, your brain uses the same neural machinery it uses to recall the past. This finding led researchers to the notion of the prospective brain. That’s the concept that the brain relies on stored information to imagine and simulate possible future events. This resonates with us, because we’re big believers in the notion that stored data can fuel new ideas.

Try this: When you sense that you’re dwelling on a dormant idea, rearrange stuff on your desktop. This ridiculously simple act may well jolt you out of analysis paralysis and send a signal to your brain that it’s time to stop grinding and start playing.

From The Sun: Vancouver city council approves new bike lane for Cambie Bridge.

Staff said fewer vehicles use the bridge today than 20 years ago, and that modelling studies have shown it has enough capacity to handle projected road traffic even after the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts are torn down.

The number of vehicles has dropped not only on the Cambie Bridge but into the core of the city and into the city itself.

And people don’t believe it, deny it or simply ignore it.

Why is that?  Probably because it defies ‘common sense’ and personal experience.  As well, every few months there is another story on worsening congestion in metro Vancouver. And, likely, because it makes it more difficult to argue that bike lanes cause congestion – even though there’s lots of anecdotal and statistical evidence that it doesn’t happen.

Remember, for instance, all the media stories after the Dunsmuir, Hornby, Point Grey and Burrard Bridge changes were made: the worsening congestion, the longer back-ups, the angry motorists, the apologies from engineering staff for their mistaken projections …?

What, you don’t remember those stories?  Probably because they didn’t happen.

If there had been even modest increases in congestion that anyone actually noticed, the media would have been there with cameras roaring.  But they don’t report stories of bad things that didn’t happen.

We go through this cycle (pun certainly intended) every time: the City announces some bike infrastructure committed in plans publicly vetted and council approved, the media do their ‘another bike lane in face of public disapproval’ stories, the shock jocks yell ‘Carmageddon,’ the NPA says it’s too much too fast, the lanes get built, nothing bad happens, bike traffic improves and the traffic flows (sometimes better) – and then we start the cycle all over again with the next project.

And car traffic continues to drop.

And most people don’t believe it.

The NPR.org reports that General Motors  (GM) will be mass-producing a “self-driving car that has no steering wheel, pedals or any other manual controls.” This car will be on the street in 2019 and has no steering wheel, no brake or accelerator pedal, and a car dashboard that is …well, not a real dashboard. Surprisingly the interior of the car and the placement of the seats is as if someone was driving.

Pundits are already talking about the interior following “rigid interior design rules when you’re not required (or able) to drive” while GM is asking for a waiver of federal laws regarding safety because the rules are designed as if someone in the car-a human-is actually driving it.

These vehicles are being tested in San Francisco and in Phoenix, and apparently occupants will be able to “end the ride” by having a “stop request”. Waymo which used to be part of Google is also producing some autonomous vehicles without steering wheels and pedals, and have a

Waymo, a company that used to be part of Google, has also “made a limited number of autonomous vehicles without steering wheels and pedals,” according to The Associated Press. That company has a program for people to ride in self-driving cars in Phoenix which has been operating in the past year.

It looks like the Nintendo Switch is a resounding success in Canada.

Nintendo Canada says that the Japanese gaming giant’s home console-portable hybrid system has become the fastest-selling video game system in Canadian history, according to information provided by market research firm NPD.

The Japanese gaming giant says that “these record-breaking” sales are the strongest for the first 10 months of any video game system in Canadian history. The previous record was held by Nintendo’s Wii system, which hit monumental levels of popularity in the mid-2000s thanks to its accessible motion controls.

“The response that the Nintendo Switch has received from Canadians has been nothing short of spectacular,” said Pierre-Paul Trepanier, Nintendo of Canada’s general manager and senior director, in a statement sent to MobileSyrup. “We’re thrilled to have seen such record-breaking momentum in 2017.”

Back in December Nintendo revealed that the Switch sold 10 million worldwide in consoles in less than a year, outperforming the Wii U, the company’s previous system, by a significant margin. In the Wii U’s entire life-cycle, the console only managed to ship 13.5 million systems.

NPD is a market research firm that racks the sale of a wide range of consumer products, including the video game industry. It’s unclear how many consoles Nintendo sold specifically in Canada to hit this milestone, but we’ve reached out to Nintendo and NPD for additional details.

The post Nintendo says the Switch is the fastest-selling video game system ever in Canada appeared first on MobileSyrup.