5 ms·
Surprised at how high Canada is when you factor in its population is only 4x NYC.
by gf263 8y ago
Surprised at how high Canada is when you factor in its population is only 4x NYC.
- stealthmodeclan 8y agoI am curious how many of them are first generation emmigrants.
- yathern 8y agoWhen you say it that way, it sounds impressive, but the population is ~11% of the US (36/320), so it seems reasonable they have ~11% the output of the US (90/770).
- gf263 8y agoYeah you're right.
- qop 8y agoWhen it's really cold outside, staying inside and hacking on stuff is probably preferable to working outside. Somebody told me that's why there's so many Russian hackers even though Russian compsci education is basically third world.
- matte_black 8y agoAre there a lot of hackers in regions where it's too hot and sunny to be working outside?
- adventured 8y agoHumans adapt to living in and working in eg tropical, very hot zones dramatically easier than the coldest regions. That's why there's a vast population in the hot tropical areas, whereas there's nobody in Canada's frozen north, or vast stretches of frozen Russia. Even in the more temperate parts of cold Canada & Russia, the population density is extraordinarily low. Compare that to numerous high population density hot tropical regions. Mexico for example is one of the hottest countries on earth, it has 127 million people with a population density seven times that of Russia. Its population will soon surpass Russia. India is even hotter than Mexico. Iran and Iraq are even hotter than India (120 million people in those two countries, they'll combined surpass Russia in population very soon).
- garmaine 8y agoI suspect it also has something to do with information markets being global and internet tech being a way to get western levels of income while living with Eastern European costs.
- ian 8y agoHey this is ian hogarth. I first presented a version of this essay at an event at a place called Ditchley which had brought together various ML researchers and politicians from North America and Europe to discuss this topic. One of the things that really struck me was the similarity between the U.K. and Canada in terms of their depth of academic talent around ML but the paucity of independent “domestic champions”.
- mathinpens 8y agoI really enjoyed reading this essay-thank you for writing it.
- dekhn 8y agoIf you haven't, you should rewrite this essay from the perspective of Crypto nationalism and how that turned out.