#language Test for Canada

[aptechvisaglobalimmigration]

PTE will be 3rd acceptable English language Test for hashtag#CanadianImmigrationPrograms ( FSW, PNP, CEC, and FSTP). Pearson Test to get implemented by the second half of 2023 Pearson Tests of English (PTE) will shortly be accepted by IRCC as the new Designated English Language test for Canadian hashtag#immigrationprograms. This will Add More options for hashtag#LanguageTests for hashtag#CanadianPR.

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Son of a...

Well! That language test was so nonsensical and hard because if you have to take it again, you have to pay more money! (I don't. I passed. But it looks like not every native speaker does.)

No, Canada, I don't mind that you traumatized me trying to get me to cough up a few hundred bucks more. That's totally fine. I don't mind that you're trying to milk thousands of dollars out of other immigrants who are going through much harder process than mine. That's... cool. We're cool.😠👍

[edwisefoundation]

PTE Language Test: Your Pathway to Canadian Immigration and Education

The PTE Language Test is a key pathway for Nepalese students and immigrants aiming for Canadian immigration or education. Recognized by the Canadian government, this test helps applicants demonstrate their English proficiency, which is crucial for visa applications, permanent residency, or study permits. With both PTE Academic and PTE General scores accepted, achieving the right benchmark can significantly boost your chances of success.

For more information on how the PTE test can help you, visit the detailed guide on the PTE Language Test.

[expresswayimmigration]

IRCC now accepting Pearson Test of English for Canadian immigration

PTE will be accepted by the IRCC as of January 30, 2024 As of January 30, 2024, the Person Test of English (PTE) Core is eligible for all Canada Immigration programs. PTE Core is recognized by the Canadian Government (IRCC) for all visa categories for work and migration, and when applying for permanent residency. Now open for bookings! The faster, fairer and simpler general English test.…

[frenchtweetsblog]

How Hard or Easy is TEF Canada for Immigration Purposes?

The journey towards immigration is often filled with many challenges, and one of them is proving your language proficiency. The journey towards immigration is often filled with many challenges, and one of them is proving your language proficiency. The journey towards immigration is often filled with many challenges, and one of them is proving your language proficiency. In this article, we will…

[buglordsupreme]

Mouthwashing HCs because my old ass is not immune to rotating characters in my head like a microwave.

❤️‍🩹Anya❤️‍🩹

•28 years old.

•Eastern European, most likely Slavic or from Central Europe.

•Can speak more than three languages. Has an accent.

•Has a long term partner back home. They want to get married but both of them are broke.

•Has two pet cats. Originally, she was allowed to bring them on board with her, but then Pony Express changed their policy and stopped allowing animals in ships.

•She is constantly diagnosing everyone both physically and mentally in her imagination.

•Has a very rich inner world but rarely feels safe sharing it.

•She keeps getting rejected from med school not because of her abilities but because she constantly overthinks and gets too nervous during tests.

•INFP and Pisces.

🪓Swansea🪓

•61 years old.

•He is from the East Coast, probably the Boston area and has a heavy accent.

•British and Irish descent.

•Did not go to College but did go to Trade School.

•Despite being originally from a city, lives in the suburbs around a wooded area.

•Has a loyalty card in most hardware stores and strong opinions about screwdriver handles.

•He calls his dog a “stupid fuck” lovingly and talks to him as if he were a human.

•Has struggled a lot with depression throughout his life and has not gone to therapy as he feels like it would not work on him.

•ISTP and Virgo

🐴Jimmy🐴

•37 years old.

•East Coast, Rhode Island area.

•Italian-American. And yes, he does use his hands a lot when he speaks.

•Likely raised Catholic but now believes “it’s all bullshit”.

•Thinks Chicago-style pizza is an abomination but he can’t cook for shit.

•Long history of awful short-lived relationships and at least one ex has tried to kill him during an argument. (And vice versa)

•Has one kid that he claims isn’t really his. Resents having to pay child support.

•Has smoked ever since he was 14.

•Has been charged several times with petty crimes which have made it hard for him to find work.

-Before Curly helped him out with his position at Pony Express, he was fired from his last job due to embezzlement.

•ESTP (A very unhealthy one) and Capricorn.

🎂Curly🎂

•40 years old. (My HC is that he turns 40 during the Tulpar’s last trip, which is why he is having his whole midlife crisis).

•Born and raised in Canada.

•Moved to the US around his teens or young adulthood (Probably met Jimmy around this time as well).

•Has a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering but, since most ships are now operated by machines, had to settle for being a Freighter Pilot.

•The only man in existence that finds shoveling snow relaxing.

•Twice married and twice divorced because works makes it hard to spend time with his spouses. Has one young kid but can rarely see them due to, once again, work.

•One of the reasons he thinks about retiring from being a pilot is so that he can spend more time with his family.

•ESFJ and Libra.

🌺Daisuke🌺

•19 years old.

•Filipino-Japanese.

•Second generation immigrant. His parents worked a lot to get their wealth.

•There is no doubt in my mind that he is Californian.

•Not willing to commit to a relationship yet but is definitely on and off with a couple of girls.

•Has tried to get a fake ID at some point so he could get alcohol. He was caught and arrested and called his mom, crying. He was let go without legal consequences but was severely grounded.

•At school, he was known for drawing amazing caricatures of the teachers. Was suspended at least once for this reason.

•Incredible fashion sense. When he got his Pony Express uniform, he immediately asked if they had other colors. Did not understand at first why they laughed at him.

•ESFP and Leo.

[mijchi]

Almost Human (TV series, 2013-2014) and Detroit: Become Human (video game, 2018) similarities. PART 2

Meeting the Creator. The founder of the robotics corporation, the most gifted roboticist of his generation. (What he's up to?)

"The Luger test" and "the Kamski test." Tests were created to identify defective androids.

Android children.

Dorian's and Markus' heterochromia (Dorian is malfunctioning here. His eyes are actually blue).

Android wakes the other android to give it a better life.

Androids question the meaning of life and are afraid of death.

Androids shut down due to being emotionally overwhelmed by the stressful situations.

Androids seem to have emotional connection.

Android abilities: facial recognition, biomedical scanner, chemical analysis, data tracking, the ability to speed read data, the ability to read other androids' memory, the ability to speak in different languages, singing, parkour ability, combat, wireless communication, voice mimicry, skin regeneration...

Android LED.

Interfacing.

Android hands.

Skinless androids.

Blue blood. Androids are blue-blooded.

Giraffes (giraffe became a symbol of the Almost Human fandom).

+Extra fun facts:

Almost Human was filmed in Canada. Show uses exterior shots of the city of Vancouver. Detroit: Become Human events are connected to Canada too.

Detroit Olympics 2036 were mentioned in one of the episodes of Almost Human.

[PART 1]

[never-quite-buried]

This is…such manipulative language and you know it.

I'm really confused about your credentials. I know you're a fashion design student but you've also claimed expertise in ecology and theology and obviously you don't HAVE to prove yourself to randos, but considering how frequently you defer to your own expertise to make claims in those areas, I'm interested to know what you actually have to back that up. It would give a lot of credence to the arguments you make if you had a degree or something.

You're right, I don't have to prove myself to randos.

[brrtchu]

Maria Robotnik and Formerly Project Ignited

Man, babies are hard to draw. Anyways, introducing Maria Robotnik!

Maria moved to many places, such as Russia, Bolivia, Canada, and many islands across the Pacific, but she hadn’t considered moving into outer space with her family.

Maria is a 22 year old white, Latina and got on the space ship when she was around 16-18 years old. Her Costa Rican mom and American dad came with her to keep her company and to help find a cure for her NIDS (is that right?).

Her grandpa wasn’t actually creating Shadow at that time. The government was the one that found Shadow in a meteor crater and wanted Gerald Robotnik to research and foster him in space. He was thus called, at that time, Project Ignited by the family. For most part, he didn’t have a lot of health issues and acted like any other little kid. Maria doted on him a lot and missed him wholeheartedly when he was ready to come down to Earth to be furthermore researched by the government. Maria grew depressed from not seeing him and so did Project Ignited. The Earth researchers saw that Project Ignited wasn’t ordinary like they have presumed before, and stopped testing him to bring the news to the Robotniks. They met up in Antarctica where Project Ignited and Maria reunited. Project Ignited was 6 at the time.

Project Ignited was kept on Earth for 10 years and it was a long distanced messages and calls so that they didn’t lose contact with each other.

Eventually, the Earth Scientists sent a package to the Robotniks. Containing a vile for the cure to Maria’s illness. Gerald Robotnik took it into consideration and made a small dosage for Maria. At first, they didn’t think it worked but in fact made her worse. Maria laid in bed, her last video call with Project Ignited, she accidentally took a short nap in the middle of it. Causing Project Ignited to slightly panic and call for help. When Maria was napping she saw a glowing light and witnessed it laying something on her head. As soon as she awoke, she screamed, “REVELATION!” And proclaiming things in a different language while shaking with fear and joy.

Anyways she got cured from that instance and legally gave Project Ignited a proper name— Shadow. Because he was going to be humanity’s sideline heroine.

The happy end.

[kings-highway]

haikyuu esl accent headcanons ig miyagi prefectural edition

Karasuno

- Kageyama and Hinata are both idiots and barely pass english to begin with but I like to imagine Karasuno has an english teacher that studied/came from somewhere in Canada, so they (and all of Karasuno) end up with a classic mix of American/British vocabulary

- Daichi s u c k s at english and can barely pass the class but his accent is PERFECT and when he manages to put together an actual sentence you wouldnt believe he was esl

- by contrast Suga BREEZED through english classes, absolutely nailing the written, aural and reading portions but got <10% on his spoken exam because he's absolutely incomprehensible and cannot get his accent down

- Tsukishima and Yamaguchi get the highest grades in english out of all of Karasuno, but both of them inexplicably picked up a british accent (southern more, london area) and they refuse to admit that it's because of the sheer volume of Great British Bake-Off they've watched/had on in the background while doing homework.

- Noya and Tanaka both failed english their first year but realized if they convinced Suga and Daichi, separately, to tutor them, they could get a passing grade

- somehow Suga and Daichi have never considered helping each other

- Asahi is not the best at english but he is their english teacher's favourite

Shiratorizawa

- Ushijima obviously speaks with an american accent when speaking english bc he practices most often with his father (west coast american accent, then)

-as a result the whole of Shiratorizawa kinda does the same because of subconsciously trying to mimic Ushiwaka

- with the exception of Tendou (who ends up bastardizing his english with a french accent??? he ends up damn near a polyglot but is incomprehensible in every language)

- and semi, who ends up with a more british accent (from the north, though) due to the british guitar teacher he takes lessons from. the rest of shiratorizawa absolutely tear him apart for this but he doesnt even realize he's doing it and has picked up british slang (trolley, jumper, lift) when speaking english

- Stz's english program is Very Good but their professors are all very old and mean and as a result most of the team developes a deep hatred of studying english/going to language classes in general

Aoba Johsai

- I like to imagine Aoba Johsai has a really fantasic english teacher/program, but they partnered with an abroad exchange to do so and have a disproportionate about of New Zealanders and Aussies teaching

- So the third years are all pretty fantastic with their english but the other schools hear them speak and are like "that CANNOT be right" because they all have heavy kiwi accents that the others have never heard

- inexplicably Kyotani has a much more distinct North American accent (probably somewhere eastern, great lakes area) and he Will Not explain himself until he begrudingly admits that he's actually started learning english when he was really young from an American teacher and is VERY GOOD but has been intentionally throwing tests so that nobody would ask him to tutor them

- first/second years ask him to tutor them immediately upon learning this and he refuses

- Oikawa is irritatingly good at languages, and has to force Iwaizumi to study. Iwa is usually pretty good with keeping on top of school work but he just HATES conjugations and tenses and has no memory for it.

- once Oikawa realizes the other schools are making fun of their english accents/professors, he works out the dialects of thr other english countries and just switches between then depending on who he's speaking to. the rest of seijoh hates this because when he's not using the kiwi accent they cannot understand him.

[expresswayimmigration]

IRCC to accept PTE Essential as new English language Test for Canada immigration

Pearson English Test Approved by the IRCC for Canadian Immigration IRCC to accept PTE Essential as new English language Test: Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, has been designated by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to launch its newest language test, PTE Essential, for proof of English language proficiency. PTE Essential is a new version of the Pearson Test of…

[frenchtweetsblog]

Learning French for TEF Canada - French Tweets

Learning a new language is not just about mastering a new skill; it can also open doors to incredible opportunities. If you’re considering immigration to Canada, particularly for study or work purposes, mastering French can be a significant advantage. The Test d’Évaluation de Français (TEF Canada) is a language proficiency test recognized by the Canadian government. In this comprehensive guide,…

[agapi-kalyptei]

crowdstrike hot take 5: so who was incompetent, really?

OK so it's the first Monday after the incident. CrowdStrike (CS) is being tight-lipped about the actual cause of the incident, which Microsoft estimates to have affected 8.5 million devices.

Here's an unconfirmed rumor: CS has been firing a lot of QA people and replacing them with AI. I will not base this post on that rumor. But...

Here's a fact: wikipedia listed 8429 CS employees as of April 2024. Now the updated page says they have 7925 employees in their "Fiscal Year 2024".

Anyway. Here's a semi-technical video if you want to catch up on what bluescreen and kernel-mode drivers are in the contexts of the CS incident by a former microsoft engineer. He also briefly mentions WHQL certification - a quality assurance option provided by Microsoft for companies who want to make sure their kernel drivers are top-notch.

Now conceptually, there are two types of updates - updates to a software itself, and a definition update. For a videogame, the software update would be a new feature or bugfixes, and content update would add a new map or textures or something. (Realistically they come hand in hand anyway.) For an antivirus/antimalware, a definition update is basically a list of red flags - a custom format file that instructs the main software on how to find threats.

The video mentions an important thing about the faulty update: while many people say "actually it wasn't a software update that broke it, it was a definition file", it seems that CS Falcon downloads an update file and executes code inside that file - thus avoiding the lengthy re-certification by Microsoft while effectively updating the software.

Some background: On audits in software

A lot of software development is unregulated. You can make a website, deploy it, and whether you post puppy pictures or promote terrorism, there's no one reviewing and approving your change. Laws still apply - even the puppy pictures can be problematic if they include humans who did not consent to have their photos taken and published - but no one's stopping you immediately from publishing them.

And a lot of software development IS regulated - you cannot make software for cars without certifications, you cannot use certain programming languages when developing software for spaceships or MRIs. Many industries like online casinos are regulated - IF you want to operate legally in most countries, you need a license, and you need to implement certain features ("responsible gaming"), and you must submit the actual source code for reviews.

This varies country by country (and state by state, in USA, Canada, etc) and can mean things like "you pay $200 for each change you want to put to production*", or it can mean "you have to pay $40'000 if you make a lot of changes and want to get re-certified".

*production means "web servers or software that goes to end customers", as opposed to "dev environment", "developer's laptop", "QA environment" or "staging" or "test machines", "test VMs" or any of the other hundreds way to test things before they go live.

The certification, and regular audits, involves several things:

Testing the software from user's perspective

Validating the transactions are reported correctly (so that you're not avoiding taxes)

Checking for the user-protecting features, like being able to set a monthly limit on depositing money, etc

Checking the source code to make sure customers are not being ripped off

Validating security and permissions, so a janitor can't download or delete production databases

Validating that you have the work process that you said you would - that you have Jira (or similar) tickets for everything that gets done and put to production, etc, and

...that you have Quality Assurance process in place, and that every change that goes to production is tested and approved

You can see why I highlighted the last point, right.

Now, to my knowledge, security software doesn't have its own set of legal requirements - if I want to develop an antivirus, I don't need a special permission from my government, I can write code, not test it at all, and start selling it for, idk for example $185 per machine it gets deployed to.

And here's the thing - while there certainly is a level of corruption / nepotism / favoritism in the IT industry, I don't think CloudStrike became one of the biggest IT security providers in the world just by sweet talking companies. While there isn't any legal regulation, companies do choose carefully before investing into 3rd party solutions that drastically affect their whole IT. What I mean, CloudStrike probably wasn't always incompetent.

(Another rumor from youtube comments: A company with ~1000 employees was apparently pressured by an insurance company to use CrowdStrike - whether it's a genuine recommendation, an "affiliate link" or just plain old bribery... I do not know.)

WHY what happened is still very baffling

See, this is what would be the process if I was running a security solutions company:

a team is assigned a task. this task is documented

the team discusses the task if it's non-trivial, and they work on it together if possible

solo developer taking the task is not ideal, but very common, since you cannot parallelize (split it between several people) some tasks

while developing, ideally the developer can test everything from start to finish on their laptop. If doing it on their laptop isn't possible, then on a virtual machine (a computer that runs only inside software, and can be more or less stored in a file, duplicated, restored to a previous version, backed up, etc, just by copying that file)

in case of automated software updates, you would have "update channels". In this case it means... like if you have a main AO3 account where you put finished things, and then you'd have another AO3 account where you only put beta fics. So in my hypothetical company, you'd have a testing update channel for each developer or each team. The team would first publish their work only on their update channel, and then a separate QA team could test only their changes.

Either way, after maybe-mostly-finishing the task, the code changes would be bundled in something called a "pull request" or "PR" or "merge request". It's basically a web page that displays what was the code before and after. This PR would be reviewed by people who have NOT worked on the change, so they can check and potentially criticize the change. This is one of the most impactful things for software quality.

Either before or after the PR, the change would go to QA. First it would be tested just in the team's update channel. If it passes and no more development is needed on it, it would go to a QA update channel that joins all recent changes across all teams.

After that, it would be released to an early access or prerelease update channel, sometimes called a canary deploy. Generally, this would be either a limited amount - maybe 100 or 1000 computers, either used internally, or semi-randomly spread across real clients, or it could be as much as 10% of all customers' computers.

THEN YOU WAIT AND SEE IF THERE ARE NO ERROR REPORTS.

Basically ALL modern software (and websites! all the cookies!) collect "metrics" - like "how often each day is this running", or "did our application crash"

you absolute MUST have graphs (monitoring - sometimes this is a part of discipline called "reliability engineering") that show visually things like the number of users online, how many customers are lagging behind with updates, how many errors are reported, how many viruses are being caught by our software. If anything goes up or down too much, it's a cause for concern. If 10% of your customers are suddenly offline after a canary deploy is out, you're shitting your pants.

ONLY after waiting for a while to see everything is okay, you can push the update to ALL clients. It is unfathomable how anyone would do that straight away, or maybe how someone could do it without proper checks, or how the wrong thing got sent to the update.

As ClownStrike is still silent about the actual cause of the issue, we can only make guesses about how much they circumvented their own Quality Assurance process to push the faulty update to millions of computers.

It gets worse

Here's the thing: CrowdStrike itself allows users to create computer groups and let them choose the update channel. You, as a business customer, can say

these 100 unimportant laptops will have the latest update

these important servers will have N-1 update (one version behind)

the rest of the company will have N-2 update (two update versions behind)

CrowdStrike has ignored those settings. According to some youtube comments, supposedly they pushed the update to "only" 25% of all devices - which is worrying to think this could have gone even worse.

Third time isn't the charm

And hey, do you know what happened two years before CrowdStrike was founded? The CEO George Kurtz was at the time, in 2010, the CTO of McAfee, the controversial / crappy security company (IMO offering one of the worst antivirus programs of all times, that was aggressively pushed through bundled OEM deals). In both 2009 and 2010 their enterprise software deleted a critical operating system file and bricked a lot of computers, possibly hundreds of thousands.

And yes, the trigger wasn't an update to the antivirus itself, but a faulty "definition update". Funny coincidence, huh.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Do you know why Indians in particular (and I suppose, new age spiritualists) believe in things like homeopathy or ayurveda(like ashwagandha)? I've always found it so odd, even growing up in india. It's clear that some of these beliefs are marketing schemes, like saying A2 (Indian cows) milk > A1(foreign cows) to the point that they sell A2 cow milk and butter at 10x-20x the price of A1 cow milk. All because of "Vedic" practices (prayers and conducting rituals) of cow rearing. We know that ayurveda especially has no clinical or empirical evidence. It's all anecdotal. But even I was taught to believe that turmeric is a good antioxidant and is great for colds. In reality, only about 2% of turmeric is absorbed by your body. Are indians just more gullible because of Hinduism or is it just willful ignorance because they want to feel some sort of superiority in their spirituality?

Lots of love, thank you for continuing to post!! 💛💛 Hope you're doing well.

A big chunk of it may well be the lack of penetration of criticism and mockery of these superstitions, both for cultural and language reasons.

There's a saying that "sunlight is the best disinfectant." This isn't literally true, it's a metaphor for the notion that exposing ideas to the light of scrutiny, examination and refutation helps to break down and destroy false or bad ideas.

To some extent, the persistence of these superstitions may be that they've not been well exposed to public view to the extent many others have been.

Islam has in its doctrine, the curative and medicinal properties of camel urine. To the extent it's packaged and sold as medicine in the present day solely because in multiple hadiths, Muhammad prescribed camel urine for ailments. People don't know about this, don't believe it or start making excuses about "natural remedies" and the limitations of "western medicine." Even while the World Health Organization calls for people to stop drinking it.

Outside India, there's a certain anti-western chauvinism, coupled with a fetishization of "exotic" cultures. Which is really just the Appeal to Nature and Appeal to Tradition fallacies. But are ripe to be exploited by con artists (e.g. Deepak Chopra) for sale to the credulous who mistake their trendy credulity for "open mindedness." Even though the same people would never be so gullible about superstitions based on Xian mythology.

What this means is that a protective bubble forms around these superstitions because attacking primitive, superstitious nonsense hogwash becomes a "racist" attack on a "culture." You're allowed to - and encouraged to - criticize and attack Xian faith-healing, but not Hindu faith-healing because that's just intolerant of a "culture." Note that this means they want Indian culture to be mired in primitive superstitions.

Internal to India, I think a big part is just that it's so dominant and there isn't the tradition of secularism - separation of church/religion and state - which means religious faith holds more sway. Coupled with more explicit moves in recent years to mirror Islam in offence and fragility regarding "blasphemy" - see the whole "Sexy Kali" thing, for example.

In contrast, in the US, there's been legal challenges mounted against homeopathy as fraud and false advertising under consumer protection laws. If there's no evidence of efficacy, government safety organizations in countries like the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand either don't allow a product to be sold as "medicinal," or don't allow it to be sold at all.

I don't know enough about Indian law to know how robust Indian safety or consumer laws are in terms of leveraging them to call out the same kinds of fraud, but what you're saying about the milk suggests they might not be. It's essentially a claim of "magic milk," given there could be no scientific test that such a claim could survive.

So, there's this absence of pressure from both internal and external. And as we know from evolution, it's pressure which drives change.

People need to be willing to treat Indian and Hindu superstitions the same as they treat Xian superstitions and other unscientific bunk, rejecting attacks on the basis of "racism" or "blasphemy" or "intolerance" or all the usual shit. But I think there also needs to be avenues culturally and legally within India to start challenging the assertions being made. I don't know enough about Indian society or culture to know how much of a superiority complex may be at play, but there is likely an element of ignorance, not necessarily wilful, just regular old ignorance, because of the pervasiveness and persistence of these ideas.

Of course, people are still free to believe stupid shit. But that doesn't mean it should get special, elevated status or be allowed to commit acts of rampant fraud.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

I grew up in the Indian state of Punjab. It felt like almost every street in my state had billboards promoting a better life and lots of job opportunities with higher salaries in Canada. I knew many families whose younger members were enrolled in courses for English-language proficiency tests making efforts to move to Canada. The pride in the eyes of those parents as they shared the news of their son or daughter settling in Canada left a strong impression on me. It made me think Canada had amazing opportunities and could one day also become my home.

[...]

When we landed in Toronto in January 2021, we experienced our first snowfall. I loved breathing in the clean air and listening to the sounds of nature, which were so different from India. But soon our winter started getting colder with the cold calls that ended nowhere. After a few months of job hunting, I realized that my education and nine years of experience as an architect in the Middle East didn't matter.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada