#Canadian startups

[iammannyj]

Keeping It Canadian: Supporting Local Businesses and Resources in Challenging Times

[sweetbunbakeshop]

We're officially open for business!

Check us out at www.sweetbunbakeshop.ca 🥄🤍🐇

(because Tumblr has always been my favourite by far, and because you guys are so good to me, use code BUNBLR at checkout for 10% off your first order! 🤍)

[rbmkno4cookout]

Cancellation fees are some of the hardest bullshit imaginable. "Hey if our service sucks, fuck you pay us more to stop giving you a shitty service"

Unethical business practices only work because I'm not allowed to burn down your offices if you fuck me over. they won't fucking let me

[crypto195]

Top Cryptocurrency Startups in Canada

Discover Innovative Cryptocurrency Startups in Canada Learn about the top cryptocurrency firms in Canada that are thriving in industries like gaming, lending, trading, DeFi, and blockchain infrastructure. These forward-thinking businesses are influencing the direction of technology and digital finance by providing cutting-edge solutions that spur expansion and change the crypto scene in Canada and abroad. Leading Crypto Startups in Canada The blockchain business in Canada is growing, and its future is being shaped by creative startups. These enterprises provide businesses and consumers with innovative services. Launched in 2018, Ledn specializes in neglected markets such as Latin America and offers specialized loan and borrowing products in the crypto finance space. Another 2018 startup, VirgoCX, provides a safe and easy-to-use cryptocurrency trading platform that emphasizes security and openness. Asteroid 1 provides CAD-based trading and teaches Canadians about digital currencies, while Index Coop streamlines decentralized finance through controlled cryptocurrency indices. TrustSwap creates safe DeFi apps for investors of all stripes, including institutional clients. These firms demonstrate their broad reach by driving blockchain innovation and impacting industries like gaming. Innovative Blockchain Solutions for the Gaming Industry Thanks to cutting-edge blockchain solutions, the Canadian gaming industry is undergoing a major transformation. From traditional RPGs to the growing sector of online casinos in Canada, companies like Horizon Blockchain Games Inc. are leading the way by creating user-focused environments where players can control their digital assets and participate in transparent economies. This tactic gives players a true sense of ownership over their virtual in-game possessions in addition to improving their gaming experiences. Another well-known company based in Vancouver, Dapper Labs, is skilled at creating immersive blockchain-powered experiences that combine gameplay with real-world interactions. By utilizing state-of-the-art blockchain technology, Dapper Labs creates novel revenue streams and vibrant gaming communities. By establishing ground-breaking game markets based on real asset control through seamlessly integrated secondary marketplaces for player-to-player exchange of digital property, Mythical Games is also breaking new ground in the industry.

To Know More- top cryptocurrency startups in Canada

[sophsweet]

Starting new journey to live music promotion funding

Recently, I got approached by a company called UK Startup. We set a date for a call-back in 2 weeks time after they chased me by email then phone over the summer. I get wary when the other contents of my life are disregarded by any new interloper. Following our call, Sophie Blair sent me an email outlining the process. Essentially, they attribute support, provide a platform to build a business…

[brownstonereservesalb]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ron Deibert’s “Chasing Shadows”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/04/citizen-lab/#nso-group

Since 2001, Ron Deibert has led Citizen Lab, the world's foremost "counterintelligence group for civil society," where they defend human rights activists, journalists and dissidents from the digital weapons deployed by the world's worst autocrats and thugs:

https://citizenlab.ca/

Citizen Lab's work is nothing short of breathtaking. For decades, this tiny, barely resourced group at a Canadian university has gone toe to toe with the world's most powerful cyber arms dealers – and won.

Today, Simon and Schuster publishes Chasing Shadows, Deibert's pulse-pounding, sphinter-tightening true memoir of his battles with the highly secretive industry whose billionaire owners provide mercenary spyware that's used by torturers, murderers and criminals to terrorize their victims:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Chasing-Shadows/Ronald-J-Deibert/9781668014042

Mercenary spyware companies are based all over the world, but the global leader in providing these tools is Israel, where the signals intelligence Unit 8200 serves as a breeding ground for startup founders who grow wealthy serving dictators around the world, thanks in part to Israel's lax export standards for cyberweapons.

Most notorious of these companies is the NSO Group, whose Pegasus malware has been deployed by corrupt, narco-affiliated Mexican politicians, murderous Saudi royals, and dictators in Central Asia, Latinamerica, and all around the world.

The NSO Group's founders told their customers that they were invisible, as ethereal as shadows, so their products could be deployed without fear of detection or consequence. At the same time, NSO ran a disinformation campaign for the broader public, insisting that they have the highest ethical standards and closely monitor their products' use to ensure that it is only deployed against terrorists and serious criminals. This latter strategy is backstopped by harassment and intimidation of journalists who investigate this narrative – I have personally been threatened by lawyers retained by the NSO Group.

Diebert and Citizen Lab disprove both of NSO's narratives. Their technical staff developed incredibly clever, subtle methods to detect malware infections all around the world and identify who had been targeted by NSO's products (they were greatly aided in this by farcical blunders in NSO's products).

In so doing, Citizen Lab not only showed that customers for mercenary spyware will someday be discovered – they also thoroughly disproved the company's narrative about its squeaky-clean image and high morals.

Much of Deibert's book is a true-life technothriller recounting the technology, the politics, and the human cost of a largely unregulated industry whose protectors are among the most powerful people in the world.

This book contains many never-revealed revelations from Deibert's distinguished career, like notes from a meeting where Stephen Harper's top spooks and Privy Council officials threatened and intimidated Deibert over Citizen Lab's reports on Saudi Prince Mohammed Bin Salman's use of spyware on Canadian residents.

Deibert also reveals some juicy bits of less consequence, like the fact that it was he who tipped off the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones that Research In Motion was helping Middle Eastern autocracies and India's far right government spy on dissidents' Blackberry devices, just minutes before RIM co-founder Mike Lazardis was to sit for a televised interview with Cellan-Jones for the BBC's Click. When Cellan-Jones asked Lazaridis about the matter, Lazaridis at first denied it, then demanded that the camera be turned off before halting the interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6iGe7vuGeQ

But the majority of Deibert's book is a string of horrifying stories of dissidents, activists, journalists, opposition politicians and the people around them having their lives peeled open by companies like NSO Group and their competitors. They run the gamut from multiple, successive presidents of Catalonia to the US-based children of activists agitating for limits to sugary drinks in Mexico.

On the way, Deibert is hounded by all kinds of dirty-tricksters, like the bumbling ex-Mossad spook that Black Cube – whom Harvey Weinstein hired to harass his victims – hired to discredit the organization:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/black-cube-nso-citizen-lab-intelligence.html

He's also chased by troll armies working on behalf of South American despots, the corrupt Modi government of India, and middle eastern autocrats in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. While most of these trolls are anonymous jerks, a few high-profile serial online harassers-for-hire are singled out by name, their deeds publicly connected for the first time.

Deibert shows the human impact of mercenary spyware: the connection between these companies' products and intimidation, arbitrary detention, punitive rape, torture, and murder – for example, he painstaking lays out the role that the NSO Group's products played in the murder and dismemberment of the US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

This is a dirty business, but it's also a lucrative one. Citizen Lab goes eyeball-to-eyeball and toe-to-toe with farcically wealthy, well-resourced attackers, who've waxed fat by abetting corruption and sadistic greed.

But this isn't mere rage-bait. Deibert's story is an inspiration, both in how it shows how principled, decent, hardworking people can make a difference – Citizen Lab researchers repeatedly discover and burn the vulnerabilities exploited by mercenary spyware, a process Deibert likens to disarming them – but also in the bravery and resilience of the subjects who trust Citizen Lab to analyze their devices, risking everything to come forward and tell their stories.

Citizen Lab is enmeshed in a global, digital community of human rights defenders – a community that wouldn't exist without the internet. Deibert's life's work is to create an internet that is fit for human thriving – and to wrestle control of technology away from the monsters who project their greed and sadism around the world through our devices.

[dertaglichedan]

CEO of Canada’s 2nd biggest company defends Trump’s tariff demands, slams Trudeau for not stopping trade war

The CEO of Canada’s second-largest publicly traded company says Canadians want their government to do all the things that President Trump is demanding — and slammed outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for not preventing the trade war.

Trump, 78, on Saturday, signed an executive order to slap 25% across-the-board tariffs on America’s northern neighbor, citing its failure to meet his demands on helping crack the fentanyl and illegal immigration trade.

“Canada thrives when it works with America together. Win by helping America win. Trump believes that Canada has not held its side of the bargain,” Tobi Lutke, who co-founded Shopify, wrote on X.

“These are things that every Canadian wants its government to do, too. These are not crazy demands, even if they came from an unpopular source. These tariffs are going to be devastating to so many people’s lives and small businesses.”Lutke’s withering critique came in response to a clip of Trudeau announcing 25% retaliatory tariffs on $107 billion worth of US goods and pushing for policies targeting red states. Shopify, the e-commerce giant that Lutke co-founded in 2006 is worth about $150 billion. It’s Canada’s biggest tech company and biggest ever startup — and second only to the Royal Bank of Canada in size.

[newtiative]

Brian Tracy - Don't stop | @newtiative

Brian Tracy is the founder and CEO of Brian Tracy International. He is a Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author.

#motivation #entrepreneur #inspiration #learnfromfounders #innovation #win #future #money #investing #startup #growthmindset #quotes #briantracy #newtiative

Learn from Brian Tracy. Invest wisely. Achieve financial freedom.

Follow for expert analysis, inspiring stories, and actionable tips.

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - October 30, 2023

1. Bill to Ban Hidden Fees in California Signed into Law

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has released a statement regarding the signing of Senate Bill 478 (SB 478). SB 478, coauthored by Senators Bill Dodd and Nancy Skinner, will eliminate hidden fees, also known as 'junk fees,' in California starting from July 1, 2024. Hidden fees are deceptive charges that sellers include in transactions, either through obscured disclosures or later revelations, impacting consumers negatively.

2. New Portable Water Treatment System Vaporizes 99% of ‘Forever Chemicals’

A startup based Washington has devised a portable system capable of removing the vast majority of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from water.

The system uses hydrothermal alkaline treatment, or HALT, to eliminate 99% of forever chemicals from water.

3. Tumor-destroying sound waves receive FDA approval for liver treatment in humans

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of sound waves to break down tumors—a technique called histotripsy—in humans for liver treatment. Technique developed at the University of Michigan provides a noninvasive alternative to surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer

4. Japan's top court says trans sterilisation requirement unconstitutional

Japan's Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional to require citizens to be sterilised before they can officially change genders.

The 2004 law said people could only change their gender if they have no reproductive capacity. Wednesday's ruling came after a transgender woman filed a petition challenging the law.

5. Abandoned golf courses are being reclaimed by nature

Golf courses, despite occupying large green spaces, are not necessarily good for the environment.

Conservation nonprofits and local authorities are looking to acquire golf courses that have been abandoned due to high maintenance costs, low player numbers or other reasons, and repurpose them into landscapes that boost biodiversity and build natural defenses against climate change.

6. NSW court allows health officials to give blood transfusion to Jehovah's Witness toddler

Regional New South Wales health officials have won a court order authorising them to give a blood transfusion to a Jehovah's Witness toddler if needed in surgery. The Supreme Court has been told the girl, three, who can only be referred to as JI, is in need of two surgical procedures. 

On such an application, the overriding criterion to be applied by the court is the best interests and welfare of the child.

7. North Atlantic right whale population has steadied, scientists say

The population of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales appears to have levelled off after a decade of steep decline, according to updated data released this morning by Canadian and American scientists. Scientists in the consortium said Monday that the 2021 estimate of 340 North Atlantic right whales in existence has been recalculated to 365 primarily because of the number of calves born that year.

The estimate for 2022 is 356.

---

That's it for this week :)

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[yourfuturemachine]

Edison Motors, a Canadian startup, developed a diesel-electric hybrid semi-truck. Topsy is a working prototype that uses a CAT C9 diesel engine to power a generator. The generator charges the batteries and supplies power to the electric drive axles. This setup allows long hauls without relying on charging stations—perfect for remote areas. Equipped with regenerative braking, Topsy recaptures energy when going downhill. It packs two electric motors, one per axle, delivering 700-800 hp and up to 85,000 lb-ft of torque. Edison Motors has road-tested Topsy, but their production model, the Series L, has yet to be announced. Would you drive a hybrid semi? Learn more at edisonmotors.ca

[sliebman10]

Day 31: Most Recent Fic You've Loved

(Thank you to the mods for running this, and for helping bring positivity to our fandom community. Happy New year!)

This fic is full of feel good wintery, Canadian feels and top notch Wolfstar characterizations. I'm really enjoying following along with it.

The Road to Love is Covered in Ice and Slush by @wannabelilybriscoe

M | Sirius Black/Remus Lupin | currently 50k

Summary:

Toronto, Present Day. When Remus loses his dream job as a staff writer at an independent arts and culture magazine, he has no choice but to go to the dark side: content marketing for a software startup. But the company isn't what he expects and neither are the two Brits who founded it. As the team struggles to meet a tight deadline that will determine the future of their business, an ice storm of historic proportions hits the Big Smoke - and right before Christmas! Snowed in with Sirius Black, Remus learns that the road leading to love is sometimes covered with ice and slush, but it's always beautiful. Or: A Wolfstar Christmas: Toronto Edition!

@hprecfest

[tzifron]

More and more of the Canadian economy is dominated by a handful of huge companies that control what we buy, how we work, and which other businesses can or can’t thrive. 

Beyond the obvious examples of airlines, telcos, grocery chains, and banks, The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians shows how corporate concentration is growing across many industries, leading to higher prices for consumers, lower worker’s wages, more inequality, fewer startups, less innovation, and lower growth and productivity.

In this galvanizing book, Hearn and Bednar show how companies perpetuate the illusion of rivalry to disguise their dominance, and how they’ve shifted from competing within industries to accumulating assets across industries, further entrenching their power. The authors coach readers on how to think about competition, how markets are made and remade, and how the right set of attitudes and policies reduce corporate power and rebalance it throughout the economy.

The future of Canada’s economy is up for grabs, and The Big Fix shows how the country can achieve a more innovative, productive, and livable economy for all Canadians.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Madeline Ashby’s ‘Glass Houses’

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Glass Houses – published today by Tor Books – is Madeline Ashby's terrifying technothriller: it's an internet-of-things haunted house story that perfectly captures (and skewers) toxic tech culture while also running a savage whodunnit plot that'll keep you guessing to the end:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765382924/glasshouses

Kristen is the "Chief Emotional Manager" for Wuv, a hot startup that has defined the new field of "affective computing," which is when a computer tells you what everyone else around you is really feeling, based on the unsuppressible tells emitted by their bodies, voices and gadgets.

"Chief Emotional Manager" is just a cutesy tech euphemism for "chief of staff." The only person whose emotions Kristen really manages is Sumter William, the boyish billionaire CEO and founder of Wuv. Sumter hired Kirsten because they share a key developmental trait: both were orphaned at an early age and had to raise themselves in a media spotlight.

Both Sumter and Kristen had been in the spotlight even before their parents' death, though. Sumter was the focus of the intense attention that the children of celebrity billionaires always come in for. Kristen, though, was thrust into the spotlight by her parents: her prepper cryptocurrency hustling father, and her tradwife mother, whose livestreams of Kristen's childhoods involved letting the audience vote everything from whether she'd get dessert after dinner to whether her mother should give her bangs.

Kristen's parents died the most Extremely Online death imaginable: a cryptocurrency price-spike sent her father's mining rigs into overdrive, and when they burst into flame, the IoT house system failed to alert him until it was too late. The fire left Kristen both alone and horribly burned, with scars over much of her body.

Managing Sumter through Wuv's tumultuous launch is hard work for Kristen, but at last, it's paid off. The company has been acquired, making Kristen – and all her coworkers on the founding core team – into instant millionaires. They're flying to a lavish celebration in an autonomous plane that Sumter chartered when the action begins: the plane has a malfunction and crashes into a desert island, killing all but ten of the Wuvvies.

As the survivors explore the island, they discover only one sign of human habitation: a huge, brutalist, featureless black glass house, which initially rebuffs all their efforts to enter it. But once they gain entry, they discover that the house is even harder to leave.

This is the setup for a haunted house story where the house seems to be an unknown billionaire prepper's IoT house of horrors. As the survivors of the crash suffer horrible injuries and deaths on the island, the remaining Wuvvies bolt themselves inside, setting up a locked-room whodunnit that runs in parallel.

This is a fantastic dramatic engine for Ashby's specialty: extremely pointed techno-criticism. The ensuing chapters, which flip back and forth between the story of Wuv's rise and rise to a top tech company, and the company's surviving staff being terrorized on a paradisaical tropical aisle, flesh out Ashby's speculation and the critique it embodies.

For example, there's the political culture of Ashby's future America. Wuv are a Canadian company, headquartered in Toronto, and we gradually come to understand that Canada is the beneficiary of an exodus of tech companies from the US following a kind of soft Christian Dominionist takeover (Kristen and Sumter often have to wrangle rules about whether women are allowed to enter the USA in the company of men they aren't married to and who aren't their brothers or fathers).

The flashbacks to this America are beautifully and subtly drawn, especially the scenes in Vegas, which manages to still be Vegas, even amidst a kind national, legally mandated Handmaid's Tale LARP. Ashby uses her futuristic speculation to illuminate the present, that standing wave where the past is becoming the future. Like everything in the shadows of a haunted house tale, this stuff will make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

I'm a big Madeline Ashby fan. I have the honor of having published her first story, when I was co-editing one of the Tesseracts anthologies of Canadian SF. I've read and really enjoyed every one of her books, but this one feels like a step-change in Ashby's career, a leveling up to something even more haunting and brilliant than her impressive back-catalog.

Madeline and I will be live at Chevalier's Books in LA on Aug 16 as part of her Glass Houses tour:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-madeline-ashbys-glass-houses-tickets-965286486867

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/13/influencers/#affective-computing

[1moreoffkeyanthem]

Ooooh!!

Now I need to hear more about Ike in your OJV universe

What's he like as an adult?

Hell yeah brother! I haven’t written him much in the OJV main stories, or in general, really, I think the only stories I’ve done where he was more than just mentioned were HWB (love him in that lmao) and ATLCTS. I should amend that bc Ike SLAYS!!!

So OrangeJuiceVerse Ike Broflovski. I had an ask a while back (from the wife I believe ehe) where I went into style and their relationships with their family members and each others where I touched on Ike a little bit, but here’s official OJV Ike lore!

That Canadian fucker is smart as HELL a certified genius, skipped a couple grades and graduated high school before he even turned 16. Sped right through college and got a masters in computer science, double majored that with engineering. Like his brother, he has a passion for understanding the world around him, but he did tend to coast a bit in school, just because it all came so naturally to him and he usually didn’t have to try. As an adult, he has a tech startup company (I know nothing about technology so I’m not going to pretend I’m not kidding I can’t even figure out the tv my husband has to do it) and it’s SUPER successful. Ike is a resourceful badass and while he doesn’t share Kyle’s or their mother’s penchant for taking up a cause and fighting injustice, he has helped a lot of people with what he does.

I see Ike going through a laundry list of girlfriends, but I don’t know that he’d ever truly settle down romantically. Long term relationships don’t really interest him, but he’s very devoted to his friends and family.

I feel like he got tall really fast in middle school. Yes this pissed Kyle off. Wide smile, black hair and brown eyes. He’s kind of a string bean too lmao one of those guys who’s all limbs

He’s completely unserious a lot of the time too, and the most hilarious guy ever to troll the internet. When he and Stan hop on the gta roleplay servers, Ike knows ALL the codes to fuck shit up and make it rain rubber ducks or something. He likes to see how fast he can get kicked off. Idk why I have that headcanon but I just feel like he so would.

He’s really protective of Kyle, in the typical sibling “only I get to make fun of you” type of way. At the style wedding when Kyle was getting ready he absolutely told him he looked “gay as fuck, good thing you’re getting gay married” lmao

Ike what a dude

[newtiative]

Brian Tracy - How to winners win! | @newtiative

Brian Tracy is the founder and CEO of Brian Tracy International. He is a Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author.

#motivation #entrepreneur #inspiration #learnfromfounders #innovation #win #future #money #investing #startup #growthmindset #quotes #briantracy #newtiative

Learn from Brian Tracy. Invest wisely. Achieve financial freedom.

Follow for expert analysis, inspiring stories, and actionable tips.