kitcar

I wonder if these are refurbished units (as they are the older models)

I believe Ritual actually currently operates in a number of US markets, like Chicago https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ritual-3

It's affecting all property types. I know of one street corner where there is one newish townhouse which is a full-time AirBnB, as well as a turn-of-the-century apartment walk-up which is 100% airBnB. There is also a 1970's apartment building where a number of "tenants" sublease their property on AirBnB. I found this all out when I was helping a friend look for a place to stay near the University of Toronto...

It is frustrating as there are straightforward, cost-effective approaches the government could take to better understand the problem and they have chosen not to pursue in an expedited fashion either because of lack of effort or an active desire to stay ignorant (due to upcoming election, impact on big donors, etc...). Instead they just keep telling Canadians they will "allocate funds to better research the issue", i.e. kick the can.

For example, a simple, 80/20 analysis they could perform: list at all real estate held by holding companies in GVA and GTA and generate a list of their corporate directors. Find people who are directors on a large number of those holding companies, and check if they are related somehow to law firms, banks/wealth managers, Real estate agents or immigration businesses. If so, you now have a short list of potential properties being used for money laundering that maybe merit further investigation.

Calling the top 25 people on that list should reveal some interesting findings... Re-organize by property value if you want to catch bigger fish first.

What are the differences between your services and SMS Assist? (https://www.smsassist.com/residential-repair-maintenance-ser...)

What do you think are the most significant issues re: scaling the model?

Price? Dimensions of print? need more info. Check out https://3dprintboard.com/ , specialized to answer questions like that.

The laws regarding exactly what plays out when an HOA(condo board) doesn't pay its bills likely changes drastically by jurisdiction, but higher level you are highlighting an important point - "The Tragedy of the Commons" is a very significant issue with condos, only takes a few bad actors to make things really bad for everyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

When these services first came out there were lots of technical hurdles to overcome re: web based PDF signing, but it's pretty straightforward to do nowadays.

I had our co-op built an open-source esignature API, that produces audit logs and has a similar user flow to electronic signature provides like Docusign, Hellosign, Adobe sign, etc.... It took him a little over 2 months to get everything working. Only real difficulty he ran into was scaling and stamping signatures on the PDF, as there wasn't a singly Python PDF library that had all the necessary features.

In the end he got it figured out though - for anyone interested / looking to implement eSignatures in their app, see https://github.com/this-is-ari/libresign - it's MIT licensed.

Many experts feel they have the right to ignore other experts in their field. It's scary how some doctors pick and choose the research findings to reinforce their perspectives, regardless if it's fact based.

Also see this podcast from reply all: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/124

Likely differences in population density caused the different results

People generally don't build weallth in Vancouver. Cost of living is too high and salaries too low. Outside of real estate and film production, there dosen't seem to be sufficient scale / diveristy of business activity in Vancouver to make it a place Canadians relocate to work/start companies. Hence it's not a business center even though it's a big city.

My feeling is Vancouver is more like Monaco then New York City. Already rich people move to Vancouver.

In many cases the owners do not view it as an investment, it's a store of wealth that is difficult for the government of their home country to seize. Hence even if they lose money every year it's better then the alternative -

A hedge fund manager told me the whole investment industry is a net cost of 1-2% of global GDP per annum. I don't specifically what study that number came from, but if true its likely one of the main reasoms many see it as a waste.

To enable them to be smoked cheap and easily - which in return means the user feels the effects almost immediately. Same reason why majority of users smoke rather than eat cannabis.

Maybe related to their craiglist activities? (https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/airbnb)

At times redefining moral and ethics to better fit a business plan

It's unusable on Android. Messages arrive days late at time and other mission critical issues. I have contacted the Zulip team about it and they acknowledged Android app still needs work, web is most stable.

I want Wave to succeed but can't recommend their accounting product to anyone.

Ran into major issues with their accounting product (especially around reporting, and dealing with multiple currencies). Reached out to their team to explain the problem, they agreed it was a significant problem, but didn't really have a desire to fix it. Fast forward 12 months, core problem is still there. My only thought is when your product is free its not always easy to figure out how to prioritize what you work on.

I have found Xero to be the best intersection of function and price for SMB - Quickbooks online also had some significant quirkyness (i.e. one thing Intuit doesn't really highlight is Quickbooks online is not feature complete when compared to Quickbooks desktop - hence there are many desktop features and reports which just don't exist in the online product...)

Another tip - if you just let the steel cut oats soak overnight they will cook in ~50% of the time the "old fashion" way

I was under the impression that instant pot was not the inventor of the electric slow cooker / rice maker / pressure cooker hybrid, they were just the ones to import the concept from China and market it to North American audiences. Can anyone who lived in China in the late 90s confirm - was the instant pot style of pressure cooker popular back then, or is the instant pot brand truly the original I nventor of the hybrid pressure cooker concept?

Speaking As a (very satisfied) owner of an instant pot, when I first received it I recall noticing it looked very similar to devices I would see for sale at my local east Asian grocery store

FWIW Not suggesting they are in actuality any better, but rather from a branding perspective they want people to perceive them as better.

I believe it is because they are hesitant to blatantly disregard local laws - it's part of their brand persona, they try to be seen as the "nicer uber" - hence they try to play nice with the jurisdictions they expand to, resulting in slower expansion.

https://a16z.com/2017/09/25/government-relations-local-lyft/

To clarify for those not versed in Canadian tax policy, April is when the foreign investor tax was announced in Toronto: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/20/toronto-foreig...

"Our product and brand is intentionally a parody, and is not connected to the real Elon Musk."

Interesting! What's the key difference between this and other "auto invoice management" tools like ReceiptBank ( https://www.receipt-bank.com/ )?

Last time I was in Montreal my Uber driver wouldn't drop me at the airport, instead he dropped me at a hotel attached to the airport - he told me reason being in Montreal undercover police officers have been known to wait in the departures drop-off area and impound cars if they suspect you to be an Uber driver.

Interesting side note the driver actually was an airport employee - he would drive for Uber twice a day, once to work (he would hang out by the area of the city with lots of Hotels to try and catch and airport trip) and once on the way home. I thought that was kind of awesome.

I believe the official stance of the bank of Canada is inflation is below target hence the low rates being acceptable for so long.

What I don't understand (and I hope someone can shine some light on!) is the basket of goods they use to measure inflation doesn't seem to be very impacted by low interest rates - therefore how will the low rates increase inflation? i.e. banks will only lend to me at below 5% if I'm buying fixed assets like a house - which isn't included in the inflation measure. If I want to borrow to buy groceries, gas, or the other things they measure for inflation I would be borrowing at >19.99%. Therefore all low rates does is cause the price of fixed assets to skyrocket. But those assets are tremendously difficult to convert into consumer spending - i.e. You sell your now inflated house, but rather then spending that "profit" (due to the value of your house increasing) on more groceries and gas most people just roll it into another expensive house as they gotta live somewhere. I guess ultimately there will be a trickle down where everything will get more expensive, but seems like it would be a very long process...