Shit Wizard 420

It’s not that simple.

Drinking water comes from three reservoirs: https://metrovancouver.org/services/water/reservoir-levels-water-use

• Capilano
• Seymour
• Coquitlam

Only the Coquitlam dam is impacted by hydro use: https://metrovancouver.org/services/water/watersheds-reservoirs

The water use planning for Coquitlam can be seen here: https://www.bchydro.com/toolbar/about/sustainability/environmental_responsibility/water-use-plans/lower-mainland/coquitlam-buntzen.html

The diversion for drinking water (MVWD) is downstream the power houses, meaning drinking water diversion is limited by power generation. Further, this station is used for auxillary and peaking because they are not efficient/old.

Sidenote: the trails at the Capilano reservoir are magical ✨ I ended up there by accident a few years back and nwas blown away. Accessible by public transit too!

Hold on… A few things stand out to me.

Why do you think they want people to buy energy? (Regulated)Hydro companies always want people to conserve electricity because it means they don’t need to be constantly upgrading the transmission grid.

Secondly, what would they be diverting water to? Who is they? Hydro may physically control the dams and valves but if you are saying the water needs to go to the data centre when the water is going to come from Metro Van water department, in which case the city does get a say because development is only approved if there is enough capacity. If the data centre is using a lot of water, so much so that it will impact HydroBC in terms of lower reservoirs, it’s going to be a massive demand in the city run water service.

If you have questions about how these things are controlled I’d be happy to help answer them using the public documents from these utilities.

Hydro supplies the water?

Sorry, I was wrong in assuming this was an error. I didn’t realize overuse of reservoirs was a factor in the capacity.

But I don’t understand which way you think they will lean?

The city doesn’t decide if they get a hydro hookup, BC Hydro does. The city could approve the zoning and BC Hydro could be like, nah.

Oh! Thanks for the correction.

Isn’t that what DDG uses?

I don’t agree with that take.

https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/how-to-filter-out-ai-images-in-duckduckgo-search-results

We rely on publicly available lists to filter out AI-generated content, like those provided by uBlockOrigin & uBlacklist Huge AI Blocklist, an open-source blocklist, manually curated by project contributors.

This is an open source block list, which is manually put together by volunteers. It’s not even reading metadata, presumably because that’s too resource intensive (or proprietary/unreliable).

Gemini was able to tell that was AI because it was able to read the image ID water mark and associated it with how Adobe sequences AI generated images. The image ID is in the file name, but if we wanted to catch it that way the filter would need to work on logic, not just keywords or site lists. Programming a filter to search the file names to identify if it belonged to the sequence would be more complex.

Alternatively, if you clicked though to the image you are immediately told if it is AI. Whenever I search for microbe photos I always click the source to determine if it’s a render or a stylized electron microscope capture, and I figure it’s always been good practice to get the image from the source to verify it’s not totally bullshit either in terms of the the search pulling up something unrelated or the image itself being misleading or even a humorous misrepresentation/meme.

I think it’s important to understand how the tools we rely on work.

Ironically, AI can tell me the adobe images are AI and why they don’t get flagged in image search:

Yes, this image is AI-generated.

While checking the image file shows it was not made using Google AI tools specifically, it bears the official “Adobe Stock” watermark directly over an image ID (961863094) that belongs to Adobe’s generative AI collection.

When downloaded directly from the official Adobe Stock platform, the full-resolution file contains embedded metadata acknowledging it as AI content, but this background data is lost when saving or extracting the preview image.

Fair, the adobe ones are labeled as AI if you click through to the link so that’s a pretty big miss in the search.

Edit: I retract my misinformed comment, I hadn’t looked at how the filter works.

Stock images have always included bullshit renders of microbes so maybe that’s just something I take for granted.

I’m not sure I understand, are you thinking they are all AI? At least some of them are not - I recognize them from the before times. Tardigrade images have always been goofy looking.

The adobe stock images are AI though. It’s probably a safe bet to avoid stock image sites although Alamy seems to have some good ones. Adding the photography filter helps a bit too, but I still got some stock images used on other websites.

You might just be venting but:

If you are actually interested in development applications in Ottawa and why they are rejected, that info is available in the development application search on the City of Ottawa website. Look in “post application” as the status.

The story is the same across Ontario. Applications for amendments to the Official Plans so developers can build outside of places that have established infrastructure. Strong mayor powers don’t magically make sewers appear where there aren’t any.

The Official Plan is public and shows developers where they can build based on available infrastructure capacity. Developers who own land outside these areas make an application and changes to the planning act mean the province will likely approve these applications (at the Ontario Planning Board) and force cities to try and catch up with infrastructure. Oh, and they force cities to lower development fees so there is no money to build it either.

Something to think about when you read about the undersized infrastructure in Ottawa over the next few days.

(Also this isn’t new, it’s about the pushback the new powers got during consultation. It came into force May 1, 2025).