archive.is/i5cR3

The Globe and Mail's Tom Cardoso, Carrie Tait, Mark Mackinnon, and Stephanie Chambers have the deep dive on Sam Mraiche. I'll include some highlights, but this deserves a good read because it provides an overview with additional information about some of the relationships between Sam Mraiche, Danielle Smith, Jitendra Prasad, and Mickey Amery.

Her former chief of staff, Marshall Smith, hired multiple relatives of Mr. Mraiche at the same time as he was living in a home owned by one of Mr. Mraiche’s sisters.

...

“All of my family is in Canada now,” said Jamil Omairi, a pharmacist in the nearby town of Lala, another springboard for people destined for Alberta. Mr. Omairi is related to Mickey Amery, Alberta’s justice minister, himself a long-time friend and relative of Mr. Mraiche.

“All the young people here, people between 16 and 20, they have two ways to go,” he said. “If they find work, they stay. If there’s no work, they travel, and Brazil and Canada are the first destinations.”

...

Mraiche may be a capable import/exporter, but his world view could be mercenary. An exchange between Mraiche and BTNX, a supplier of COVID rapid tests, highlights this view.

The following week, Mr. Mraiche proposed a solution: He did “a lot of business” in Turkey, he explained, and suggested the BTNX executive use those contacts to obtain additional tests.

Mr. Mraiche also returned to the idea of diverting tests, this time from the federal government. “They’re really going to notice that a million is missing?” he asked.

“They will, yes,” responded Mr. Sunderani.

As deliveries fell further and further behind, Mr. Mraiche, who told Mr. Sunderani he was under intense pressure from Mr. Prasad, became increasingly frustrated.

“Do you know what you’re doing to me, Iqbal?” Mr. Mraiche said in an early February call. “I don’t only sell rapid test kits. I’m one of the biggest constructors here, too. Do you know what you’ve done to me? I’ve had so much mud thrown on my face, it’s not even funny.”

“You better hope there’s another wave that needs rapid tests,” he continued later in the call.

“Sam, that’s – that’s a bad thing to hope for,” Mr. Sunderani said.

“Is it? Me and you are in the business.”

“Sam, you know what? At the end of the day I don’t know about you, but I’ve made enough money. I don’t want to wish –”

“Has Jeff Bezos made enough money yet?”

“I don’t care who Jeff Bezos is,” Mr. Sunderani replied. “He has – I mean, I don’t want to wish –”

“No one’s wishing anything. It’s just going with the flow,” Mr. Mraiche said.

A month after that call, BTNX sued MHCare for $7.5-million, alleging Mr. Mraiche’s business failed to pay for more than 200,000 test kits and refused to pay for a truckload it received in error. MHCare countersued for $62.5-million, alleging BTNX overcharged, caused the company to lose money and tarnished its reputation. The two companies remain locked in litigation, and neither party’s allegations have been proven in court.

...

By the spring of 2022, the government’s response to the pandemic left Premier Jason Kenney battered. A scant majority of United Conservative Party members supported him in a leadership review in May, 2022, and he agreed to step down after the party selected a replacement.

Danielle Smith, then a party leadership hopeful, campaigned on COVID-19 grievances, railing against mask mandates and vaccine passports. Within a few months, she’d established herself as a front-runner.

A copy of Ms. Smith’s private calendar obtained by The Globe shows she took meetings during the campaign with everyone from physicians to executives – including Sam Mraiche.

In August, 2022, she was scheduled to dine at his north Edmonton home, the calendar shows.

Five days later, she was booked for a 30-minute Zoom call with Mr. Mraiche and Mr. Prasad, who retired from Alberta Health Services in the spring but stayed on as a consultant.

Ms. Smith, Mr. Prasad and Mr. Mraiche did not respond to questions about the meetings.

Who is Sam Mraiche? Inside Alberta’s health care controversy

A Globe investigation into the provincial health agency’s dealings with a company whose contracts have come under scrutiny

^{Tom Cardoso (The Globe and Mail)}

Edit: I'm now enlightened and use mpv, I really like the ModernZ OSC (on-screen controls), and uses config files.

IINA is only on macOS. I looked up linux alternatives but none of them seem to have similar looking UIs, at least out of the box. I want the player UI to float on top of the video + with a blurred background, it as shown in the image; or at least the ability to theme it like so.

A former Labour Prime Minister says Parliament is passing too many laws without proper scrutiny.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer told Nine to Noon the government was increasingly pushing through legislation under urgency, which allowed it to skip stages such as public consultation and select committees.

But Leader of the House Chris Bishop said just nine Bills have been passed in that way, and there were good reasons for all of them.

Palmer said the normal checks and balances were stripped out when laws were made at pace.

"Urgency has become the default mechanism for dealing with Parliamentary legislation and the standing orders are not followed and you also have extended sittings - and both of those mean the Government's agenda is completely at the will of the Government," he said.

Palmer said the Fast-Track Approvals Act 2024 - and its amendment - was a classic example of a trend that "ministers know best" and was "ministerial dictatorship".

"It was criticised by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment then, Simon Upton, the amendment bill puts the process that was enacted in 2024 on steroids.

"It gets faster and faster. It will be a fast-track to environmental degradation, [more] than it already is."

Bishop was approached for further comment.

The legislation, which passed under urgency at the end of last year, is back before Parliament with an amendment that the government intended to push through by the end of 2025.

It said the amendment to the Act would increase competition in the supermarket sector.

Despite being open for just over 10 days, it received 2158 submissions, with about 95 percent opposed.

Palmer said legislative checks and balances - which he already considered lacking - were further reduced when legislation was made at pace.

"What is the hurry? Legislation is law-making. You want to get it right. You have to analyse it, you have to do proper research, you don't bang it through because a minister has an idea.

"It needs to be properly drafted by Parliamentary council. We have had a degradation of our legislative system in New Zealand in recent years."

Bishop said the government had a big legislative agenda and limited hours in ordinary house time to get it done.

Regarding the use of urgency, he said: "I am reluctant to use urgency to avoid select committees outside of the standard Budget urgency process, and it is only done so when there are good reasons."

I didn't think I'd spend hours reading about this today, but some things surprised me:

1. Just using a Playstation sounds like it won't work or will be a huge time sink.
2. Blu ray optical drives are way more expensive than I thought
3. The copy protections on Blu rays are exceptionally annoying, to the extent where there is really only one closed source software -- MakeMKV -- that can work around them.
   This post goes into some interesting details.
4. Finding a drive that is known to work with MakeMKV is a pain. There's a brand called Pioneer that seems promising but they have stopped producing bluray drives ~~went out of business last year~~. I have no idea which model works, and it's common that secondhand sellers will swap enclosures and pass it off as a different model.
5. Sometimes you need to flash the firmware on the drive to make it work with 4K UHD discs.

I was going to try ripping a Blu-ray that I bought recently, since I couldn't find a quality rip anywhere, but I'm pretty turned off from the whole prospect at this point.

Anyway I'm not really asking for a specific reply, I just thought this topic was interesting and I'm curious what people think about Blu rays and optical media in general. Does the future seem bleak? Are we going to be stuck with shitty WebDLs for most new content? Or is physical media here to stay?