This works well for FedEx, UPS, and Purolator. But Canada Post can't seem to figure it out. They refuse to read the big sign on the front door that says "all couriers please go to side entrance" and instead hang a card on the front door. Unfortunately the "front" door of this building is nowhere near anyone inside and therefore nobody hears if someone were to knock there.
We asked Canada Post at one point and were told their policy prohibits going to any door other than the front...

Unfortunately I live in Canada, we don't have USPS, and Canada Post's options pretty much amount to "Screw you, you're stuck with us!"

I asked if I could have them just hold the packages, and they said no, they must deliver them to the correct address.
We asked if we could get the delivery person to come to the side door of our building (where people can actually hear the door, rather than the front door that nobody is near) and even with a sign telling all delivery people to use the side door, Canada post told us that it is against their policy to go to any door but the front. (UPS, Purolator, and Fed-Ex can all figure it out)

I've also had the tracking information show a package loaded on to a truck for delivery, and then scanned back in to the depot, with no attempted delivery at all five days in a row. and I've had 2 packages go completely missing never to be seen again (both were ones that weren't "tracked")

As for UPS, I've had their "guaranteed overnight delivery" take over a week, including them saying that they had no idea where the package was (but that it wasn't lost, because to declare it lost would take another week of investigation) and still refuse to reimburse the shipping costs, or provide any other compensation (so much for the "guarantee") (we shipped a second package to replace the first, and they both showed up on the same truck eventually)

I've also had DHL "accidentally" ship a package ground when we paid for air shipment, again, no compensation for the extra 4 days it took that package to take what should have been a one day drive.

and Both Purolator and FedEx have repeatedly delivered our packages to the wrong address, or other people's packages to our address.

About the only courier company I've had any real success with is Greyhound.

Exactly this. I can't get delivery companies to do more than sprint to the door, hang a card and sprint back to their trucks. You pretty much have to be standing on your front lawn and tackle the guy to actually get your package. If you wait for a knock or the bell to ring it's too late.

I'd actually prefer if they wouldn't even bother sending my package out for delivery, if I got an email notification when it hit their depot (like I already do) I could drive straight there and pick up my package a day earlier, as it is I have to wait for them to "attempt delivery" and only after that can I drive to that same depot and pick it up myself. Loading the package on to the truck when the guy has no intention of carrying it to your door (yes, this is common!) is a ridiculous waste of everyone's time.

If you read the summary, they mention that this will be a low earth orbit constellation, and that it will be much faster than traditional geostationary satellite networks. If you read anything more than the summary, you'd see references to how data transmission through a vacuum is 40% faster than through a fibre optic cable.
This will be competitive with terrestrial networks for most uses, and superior for long distances (such as anything that's currently on submarine cables)

If you're referring to the Mars comments, yes, it will be insanely slow. but I suspect people would still want a way to communicate back to earth and a way to access the knowledge and data available to us on earth. Slow is better than nothing. The biggest challenge there will be convincing any form of site to even wait long enough, and to design an appropriate system to send all the info you need in one burst instead of lots of back and forth like we usually do now.

Don't forget that SpaceX has also significantly reduced the cost of launches (with expectations that they will manage to reduce costs by another large margin yet). Between the two this is actually possible. Still a big, expensive, ambitious, project, but no longer impossible.

Do you buy the device that's 95% of what you wanted and try to modify it for the other 5%? Or do you buy nothing and go without the functionality you want. The vast majority of the time buying the item that's perfect for your needs isn't possible because it simply doesn't exist.

I'm all for voting with your wallet, but you have to be realistic, get the best option, don't hold out for the perfect option or you'll usually spend your life with nothing.

I have a galaxy note 4. I don't have it because I like the locked bootloader or the knox e-fuse, I have it because I live the device itself and all the functionality it provides, and while the security on it sucks, I know I can still get past it to get root. For my purposes there is no better hardware out there, and the ridiculous restrictions they put on it can be bypassed. If they stepped up their security game further and prevented me from getting root the equation would change and I'd vote with my wallet and get a different device.

We just don't live in an ideal world, sometimes perfect just isn't an option.

That's unlikley, if they were willing to simply strongarm the carriers, they wouldn't need the stingray in the first place as it can only gather the same information the cell tower already has available. The only reason to ever use a stingray is to bypass the (trivial) step of involving a carrier who might insist on something like a (rubber stamp) warrant.

The gaps are obvious. And not in the sense of "should be easy" but I'm the sense of "it's obvious that a machine can't do this yet"
it's "easy" to get a machine to interpret road signs, follow pavement markings, identify and anticipate the location and trajectory of many moving objects simultaneously, and act accordingly (ok, not easy, but no real truly new problems here)

What's hard is figuring out what to do when the road markings contradict a guy in a uniform telling you what to do, or figuring out where to go in heavy rain or snow where signs and road lines are often obscured. I don't anticipate the car crashing in any of these circumstances, but I also don't expect it to continue, even though any human driver could.

Get back to me after websites start using captchas to keep humans out and only let computers in, then I'll know the technology is at a point we can use it to drive full time. (And if you think that self driving will happen before reliable captcha solving by machines, I think you're mistaken about which one has more resources behind it)

That's actually where we are quickly headed from a legal stand point.

As much as there is hype around this "self driving" car, it simply can't. It's well know that this car can't handle rare situations like heavy rain, snow, construction zones, or any of a multitude of other situations. and that won't change for decades to come. There are simply too many variables, and one thing that computers are awful at right now is interpreting that sort of thing. What we WILL see instead is the steady introduction of more and more "driver assistance" features, we already have cars that can follow the lanes on a highway, maintain safe distances behind other cars, adjust speeds accordingly, and brake as needed. The technology to read speed limit signs is also there. These driver assistance features will eventually become fully autonomous vehicles, just not overnight as Google is trying here.

What does this have to do with anything? Well if we had self driving cars tomorrow, the laws would be re-written to accommodate them, but with minor tweaks here and there, the laws don't change the same way. The end result that I'm envisioning is that we won't be allowed to drive ourselves, but due to "distracted driving" laws, we also won't be allowed to do anything else. Sure this will be fixed eventually, but again, due to the process being a gradual change and not an all-or-nothing situation, we're in for some painfully boring "driving" in the meantime.

Or maybe the rest of the industry doesn't see a car that has a max speed of 25mph, can't drive in the rain or snow, and can't navigate a construction zone as a viable product?

These things are orders of magnitude less likely to kill someone than a normal vehicle. But they're also much less likely to get you to your destination.

That same article stated outright that it can't handle construction zones... so I wouldn't say "better than many people would" quite yet.

I love the idea of self driving cars, and I believe they will be better drivers than humans are. I don't for a moment believe we are at that point today. There are just too many situations like construction zones (or for that matter, rain and snow were also mentioned as un-navigable) to call this "ready" yet.

I hope they keep working, and I hope they get there, but if anything, this just proves how incredibly far away they are.

Funny you should bring this up, because that's exactly what this is all about.
Currently the incumbent telephone companies are legally required to offer their network to their competitors at prices that do not cover the costs of build or maintenance. This means that competitors can always undercut prices of the incumbents because they don't have to pay full price for the circuits. Pricing for the customers of the incumbent on the other hand have to cover not only the cost of their own circuit, but also the portion of the cost of the competitor's customer's circuit that wasn't covered by the mandated fees.

Should the CRTC continue to mandate that customers of one provider subsidize customers of another?

In Canada the taxpayers paid for the network up until about 25 years ago. After that it was privatized and every cent spent since has been done by the private companies, not the taxpayers. Given that the past 25 years has included huge amounts of broadband build outs (it effectively didn't exist before that) and entire new technologies (fibre to the home) this becomes a much more complicated question.

What incentive will a big player have to develop it's broadband infrastructure if they legally have to give subsidized access to it to their competition? That's actually the state of affairs right now in the copper/ADSL world. The prices that companies must offer to their competition to use that network don't cover the cost of building or maintaining it. This has been justified by the fact that the original copper plant was built with taxpayer money, however even that is a bit questionable because a lot has happened with private money since (including all the ADSL equipment, and in many cases the wires themselves (any community less than about 25 years old, or anywhere that required replacing the wires for any reason). Fibre to the home platforms have been, up until now, exempt from these sharing agreements, a competitor is welcome to try to negotiate directly with the incumbent for access, but there is no legal requirement that the incumbent allow it. These fibre networks are all new enough that they were paid for 100% with private money, not taxpayer funded. The current CRTC hearings are discussing whether this should continue, or if the fibre too should be required to be open to the competitors at discount prices.

Unsurprisingly, the incumbents don't think they should have to share the networks that they paid for with their competitors, and in any other field it would be considered ridiculous to even ask them to. But there's also the obvious question of how many lines we want to run to each house? We don't want 100 competitors all running their own wires.

I think the best outcome for all involved would be if the incumbents do share their network with their competitors, however, the mandated prices must be more than the cost of building and maintaining that network (which is not currently the case on the copper side of things) I also think that if they do this, it should be done evenly. Currently only telephone companies must share their outside plant, cable companies are immune, as there is no difference anymore between the products provided by either (phone/cable/internet) or the technology used (fibre optics) there is no reason to give the cable companies preferential treatment.

How is that different than a company paying to bypass a cap? how does that not give them an unfair advantage over the company who can't? And how does it not provide incentive for the provider to decrease caps hoping to force more companies to pay to bypass them?

It's hard to say, imagine a world where your data cap is zero, overage is $100/meg, and certain sites don't count. How is that not the same problem as one where providers are being extorted for money if they want people to see their data? And why does it become any different if the data cap is now 500 meg instead of zero? or the overage is $5/meg instead of $100? Adjust the numbers any which way you want, but the whole idea that one company can pay to get access to the customer while another may not be able to afford the same access is where the problem lies, and allowing this paves the way to a future more like cable TV than like a free internet.