owenwil

Amazon shut down their API for this and doesn’t provide any third-party integrations, but they clearly don’t give a toss about their shopping list feature in their app—it barely works and loses state constantly. But we like using the photo frame Alexa to track stuff. So I finally had Opus 5.5 figure out a way to make two-way sync work, which has been working well! It needs an always-on Mac, but then you can add/edit/check off on either side and it stays in sync.

4 months in his _current_ role, but he’s not going anywhere—he’s remaining on as Chairman, which is still very much involved day-to-day.

Yeah, this isn’t great today. We have been exploring Webhook bundles/groups for common integration shapes that make a bit easier to make the right choices based on what you’re doing and hope to have something out here to help soon.

My experience (I’m a hiring manager) is that a LARGE number of big US-based tech companies are only hiring in Canada right now for pretty obvious reasons, and are competing aggressively for top talent here. Many companies are backfilling American roles with remote Canadians when someone in the US exits right now. It’s the best I’ve seen in the ten years I’ve been here.

This is great! AFAIK our Stripe Docs were first to ship the copy for LLMs button about 14-16 months ago, which Mintlify copied the pattern (and some other patterns at the same time) from and proliferated everywhere since everyone uses them for docs out of the box now. It’s really cool to see how it’s quickly become a standard now to have that button! I do think we can do deeper integrations with LLMs that are probably more useful over time.

I can give you a number of locations to visit in B.C. and the time of day for the shadows if you want to experience it for yourself! Hasn’t been fixed in four years yet. It has gotten less frequent in general though.

I am confident that two things can be true: a) it can be better significantly in some places than others, especially like Florida, which has a lot of large, wide roads, that are probably mapped more than a lot of places which creates a more stable experience and b) Their choice of hardware and software approach is obviously less safe given their limitations, and has a number of compromises that introduce unpredictability vs other approaches.

It definitely has come a good way since I first got my car, but it's still _unpredictable_ and even seems to progress, then randomly regress, between releases. The big one is just navigating unpredictable environments, which is where Waymo is clearly far, far ahead.

In the real world, I think their approach has clearly hit a ceiling and I definitely feel a lot safer sitting in a Waymo than a Tesla, I'm not sure the gap is going to narrow unless something drastic changes.

I don’t think this is a surprise to anyone who actually owns a Tesla (I own a Model Y). Full self-driving is just _bad_ in comparison to technology from Waymo et al; it slams on the brakes suddenly for shadows, veers into the wrong lane, hesitates in pretty standard intersections, and doesn’t even understand basic concepts like school buses or trains. Here in BC, it completely ignores the 30kph school safety zones, which seems pretty basic.

My experience with FSD is that while it feels “magic” at times, it’s like a teenage driver that you have to baby sit constantly. It’s genuinely impressive how well it works given the really limited hardware, but if you use it routinely you know it will make at least one weird/dangerous choice on every trip.

Generally, I really don’t trust it in most situations except properly delineated highways, but even then it can be a crapshoot. If you’ve experienced FSD then get in a Waymo, they are night and day different—a lot more predictable, and able to navigate uncertainty compared with what Tesla has built. It’s likely down to a combination of both software and their insistence that radar doesn’t matter, but it clearly does.

I would never get in a Tesla that purports to drive itself, there’s no way it’s safe or worth the risk. I won’t even use it with my family in the car.

I know a handful of others who own Teslas and feel the same, despite what the fans spout online. I generally like my Model Y, but I definitely do not trust FSD—I find it hard to believe that it’s even being taken seriously in the media. Not a great endorsement if even your own customers don’t trust it after use it.

I’m talking about intermediate to senior—we haven’t had junior roles for a while, and junior roles have never _really_ been good for immigrants anyway. I’m a hiring manager and can tell you that it’s true in my experience that it’s not about money or being ‘cheaper’ but who is the best fit.

The weirder thing that’s going on right now that’s counter to all of this is US-based companies _only_ hiring Canadians, rather than Americans, when people leave because Canadians are cheaper overall—even though American companies tend to pay more. It’s kind of a paradox, but works out well.

I was coming in as a ‘normal’ developer design manager, but that is likely fairly specialized. I’m guessing that was in my favor. I know others with a couple of years engineering experience under their belt having a similar experience. But yes, the lack of jobs can be an issue. Lots of folks I know, myself included, now working remote for US-based companies.

In tech in Canada, usually we aren’t hiring immigrants because they’re cheaper—visas, moving someone, etc, is a huge expense. It’s often more that they’re the best possible fit for the role. After Covid with remote work etc, I don’t think there’s as much of that immigration going on, though—I don’t know of many Canadian companies sponsoring right now.

The market is still going, it’s just pretty tight right now, yeah. For what it’s worth, I lived in Europe for 5 years (NL) before this and honestly I think you’ve made a great choice there too. I learned a lot working in the Netherlands, and there’s lots of great things about living there you can’t find in North America. I miss not being bound to a car!

In my experience, Canada does an excellent job where this program fails. I entered on the high skill “express entry” visa for a tech job. After 18 months we had permanent residency. After 3.5 years, we had citizenship. It was all online and easy enough for us to do ourselves with minimal stress.

During the express entry period where you are employer sponsored, unlike in the US, if you get fired, you have until your visa expires to find another sponsoring job (the visa is valid for 5 years IIRC).

I’m pretty happy with how it went and glad we can settle, I’m not sure we would have chosen Canada if a rapid permanent path hadn’t been clear up front.