Generally, you use the radio network from mobile phone to cell tower, and then fibre optic to the switches. Sometimes they use microwave line of sight for surface-to-surface connections where fibre doesn't make sense, or is unviable (terrain, distance, cost, difficulty of laying fibre, etc.). It's possible that there could be a satellite connection in the process, but unlikely unless you're on an airplane, a ship, etc.

The GPS on the mobile phone definitely does use satellite (receive only though, no transmit).

"Appears to show"

/me: Checks videos... sees a VERY clear still from the video clear and unquestionably showing a police office with his knee on the neck of the man on the ground.

Ummmm.... right....

I moved to Alberta in late 2020 because I was told the COL was lower... it wasn't. Some things were slightly cheaper than BC, but once I included all the things like car insurance, electricity costs, and... even housing.... and then factoring in winters, snow, that brown muck that covers EVERY surface of Calgary from November to March... I bailed and moved back to BC.

I'm planning to move. I was born in Canada. I worked overseas for several years. I came back to Canada and I'm leaving again. Hopefully permanently. Better pay is definitely one aspect (although it'd take 10x increase to get me to move to the USA), but it's not the only one. Quality of life is another MAJOR point that Canadians miss out on in a big way. Yeah you get a bigger home... and a fancy big truck... but to get that, you work yourself to death, you pay insane prices for things, and you have to live with stroads...

Start with income perspective. The average annual salary in 2022 was just under $60,000. Nationally, the average house price in summer 2023 was a bit over $750,000. These incomes and house prices are affected pretty strongly by the lower incomes and lower housing costs in rural Canada vs the major cities like Vancouver and Toronto

So.. shift attention to the cities. In Toronto and Vancouver, the average house price is around $1,200,000 give or take a little. You need at a combined income of least $280,000 to qualify for a house like that (or have substantial equity built up in previous home purchases). Most people are earning at or close to the national average... with a few - especially those in STEM careers (sw devs for example) up over $100,000 per year.

I live in a suburb city (I own my house)... it's inconveniently located if you want/need to be in the core city centre for work (I'm about 3 hours commute right now if I needed to go in to a downtown office.. thankfully I don't). Houses on my street are relatively new (most built in 2019 and 2020). The houses currently for sale are listing between $1,250,000 and $2,350,000.

Renting can be really awful in Canada too... you get stunts like this https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/this-is-egregious-sisters-shocked-when-toronto-landlord-raises-rent-to-9-500-a-month-1.6548845 simply because they can...

tl;dr Housing in Canada is bonkers

That would explain a lot.. things seemed normal until about 2013...

I can really relate to this. I lived outside of Canada for 25 years. I recently-ish moved back to Canada and am totally blown away by things here. Life isn't always amazing in any place you pick on the planet, but god damn, Canadians need to stop contemplating their collective belly button lint and focus on some of the massive issues that need attention.

Those used clothes are often more expensive than new.

My wife and I try to shop for clothes for our kids at places like Once Upon a Child. We find George (Walmart) brand clothing there with prices higher than buying new at the local Walmart. There's not a lot of incentive to recycle clothing when it's priced like that.

Value Village is picked clean... There are some "vintage" clothing stores nearby as well... they are shockingly expensive.

It's really difficult to try and recycle clothing and buy or source used clothing When it is priced at the same as or higher then brand new.

Stroads... Canada is FULL of them. I wish they'd design streets here like they do in the Netherlands. I lived there for years and it was awesome.

I'm old enough to remember that grocery store only had paper bags, and replaced them with plastic bags because we were using too much paper and it was killing all the trees.

Now we're back to paper bags...

13 years on Reddit. I was part of the Great Digg Exodus... now the Great Reddit Exodus.

I deleted all my comments on Reddit, all of my posts, and then toasted my user account just before the API deadline. Not looking back.

Microsoft office

I'm rather impressed with the MS Office compatibility and comparability of FreeOffice - https://www.freeoffice.com/ The free version trails the paid by one release... seems like a fair compromise. It's not pure FOSS, so purists might not like it, but it really gets the job done, especially with rountripping documents. There are always corner cases where things go boink, but hell... things even go off the deep end between versions of MSO.