Editor

Handsome the Dog Lives up to Name as He Recovers From Alleged Mistreatment

by

Handsome the dog lives up to name as he recovers from alleged mistreatment

Handsome has come a long way in two weeks.

Back then, the seven-year-old mastiff was allegedly living outside in the snow at a Hope, B.C.-area home.

He was discovered last month near a thin, uninsulated doghouse. His water was frozen solid. And a heavy chain was hung around his neck. He was emaciated and described as “visibly shaking.”

But now, a branch manager with the B.C. SPCA says he has transformed with proper care.

“He’s a big, loving boy. He’s always really happy to see everybody,” Sarah Ringer said. “He loves to play fetch. He’s just all-around a happy dog. He’s happy to be out of the conditions he was in.”

Ringer says when Handsome was seized by SPCA volunteers, he weighed 35 kilograms but has since bulked up to 46, and Ringer says 50 kilograms is the goal.

The next step for him, after he is neutered and gets some dental work, will be to find a permanent home.

With his temperament, Ringer says he could fit in at any home.

“He really likes to lean into you all the time. I’m sure he’d make a great couch potato,” Ringer said.

She says while there have been many inquiries from people wanting to adopt Handsome, the SPCA isn’t taking applications until he’s been cleared by a vet.

The B.C. SPCA says it will recommend charges of animal cruelty against Handsome’s former owner.

Marijuana Stocks: Is Now the Time for Investors to Take the Profit?

by

As we enter 2018, the news flow for marijuana producers is growing increasingly negative amid fears that investors are expecting too much from top Canadian producers ahead of the planned legalization of the recreational market this summer.

These words of caution aren’t coming from strangers. In fact, industry executives are among those who are raising the red flag after realizing that it would probably be difficult for them to justify these valuations.

This is how MedReleaf Corp. (TSX:LEAF) Chief Executive Officer Neil Closner summed up the situation in a recent interview with The Globe and Mail:

What appears to be the case is that the market is valuing companies on total announced production capacity. Period,? Closner said. ?It doesn’t take into account that they may not be able to do it. There’s no execution risk being factored in.?

You can get an idea of how much expectation investors have built into the stocks of these pot producers from the following chart:

These numbers clearly show the gap between actual performance and future expectations, and why these stocks have become extremely vulnerable to any negative development. Canopy Growth, the largest pot producer in Canada, now trades at a price-to-sales multiple of over 60 times, which is big enough to sound the alarm.

We saw a slight glimpse of this classic investor behaviour on January 4, when all big cannabis stocks plunged after the U.S. federal government indicated that it may soon ramp up its prosecution of marijuana-related crimes despite a wave of States moving to legalize the drug.

According to reports, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions would rescind an Obama-era memo that had effectively pledged that the federal government wouldn?t get involved in prosecuting marijuana-related crimes in States that had chosen to legalize the drug.

Marijuana stocks: what?s the rational approach?

Investors? psychology has driven a remarkable rally in pot stocks last year. And that psychology tells us that investors usually overreact in both positive and negative situations.

There is no doubt that the federal government is very serious about meeting the July 1 deadline to legalize the recreational use of cannabis in Canada. There is likely more upside potential, but we shouldn?t ignore the downside risks as we approach this deadline. As yet, nobody can determine the size of this opportunity or how consumers will react.

As I?ve discussed in my earlier articles, all the good news has already been priced into marijuana stocks. I believe this is the best time for risk-averse investors to take the profit and move to the sidelines.

As the market focus shifts to the execution, we?re going to experience a bumpy and potentially very risky ride in the cannabis space going forward.

Meet the Canadian Who Helped Coin the Term ‘Weather Bomb’

by

The term was popularized in a 1980 paper co-authored by McGill University professor
The ‘weather bomb’ as it made its way up the East Coast, as seen by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite on Jan. 4

Weather bomb, bombogenesis. Whatever you call it, it’s big, powerful and has impacted tens of thousands of people.

It’s probably not surprising that we have a Canadian to thank for the popularization of the term that has struck fear into the hearts of those living along the East Coast of the U.S. and Canada this week: weather bomb.

In 1980, McGill University professor John Gyakum co-authored a paper entitled “Synoptic-Dynamic Climatology of the ‘Bomb’,” with Frederick Sanders from MIT.

In it, the pair discussed a rapidly intensifying low-pressure storm that specifically was fed by warm water currents moving northward from the southern latitudes and meeting a much colder air mass. This, in turn, produces hurricane-force winds and excessive amounts of precipitation, Gyakum told CBC News.

But while Gyakum certainly helped bring the term “weather bomb” to the forefront of public consciousness, he notes that the term was around much earlier than 1980.

The road at Queensland Beach outside of Halifax was destroyed in Thursday’s pounding surf. It isn’t the first time this road has been destroyed in a powerful Atlantic storm.

“It was an informal term used in the hallways of MIT for years before the paper got published,” Gyakum told CBC News.

Now, with social media bringing weather to everyone instantaneously — pictures of downed power lines, cars covered in snow, people battling against the wind — terms like “polar vortex” or “weather bombs,” which have been around for decades, spread like wildfire. But is it accurate?

“As long as it brings attention to the impacts that these systems can produce, I think it’s good. It’s a fine term to use,” Gyakum said. “Because it’s efficient and it describes adequately a weather phenomenon that is greatly important not only to researchers but to stakeholders, in particular stakeholders who live along the coast.”

Gyakum, who teaches at McGill’s department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and still continues to research said that, because these types of storms rarely affect land, they often fall from people’s consciousness. So when one does hit hard, people are in awe of how powerful they are.

A necessary evil

While these types of systems are dangerous and a disruption to our lives, Gyakum notes that these “bombs” are just doing their job.

“Cyclones have an essential function in the atmosphere,” he said. “And that’s to transport heat and moisture northward in the Northern Hemisphere … If we didn’t have cyclones, there would be just heat that would continually build up in lower latitudes, and higher latitude regions would just cool down. But these cyclones act to ameliorate and balance that difference… It’s just that bombs do it very efficiently and quickly.”

People in parts of northern New Brunswick were left without power after Thursday’s powerful ‘weather bomb.

It’s still unknown what role climate change will play in the production of these weather bombs. Will they be more frequent, more intense? Just be happy that we’re not seeing a “cluster bomb,” a succession of these destructive storms.

Reflecting back to when the term weather bomb was first put out there, Gyakum noted that not everyone was happy.

“When Fred Sanders and I introduced that term in the early 1980s, the Europeans actually complained that ‘bomb’ was kind of an offensive term. You know, it makes you think of war,” he said. “So Fred Sanders’s response was, ‘So why are you using the term ‘front’?”

How Do Electric Cars Start in the Bitter Cold? Shockingly Well, Experts Say

by

You can take measures to maximize your EV’s range in the cold, experts say

Clara Clairman of Plug’n Drive says they don’t hear any stories of EV owners having trouble starting up their cars in the winter.

It’s a common Canadian winter experience. You turn the car’s ignition key and the engine makes a sickly “whirr-whirr” sound but does little else. It makes sense that extreme cold is brutal on batteries, so what happens to electric cars?

It’s an important question with another bitter cold snap settling over southern Ontario.

“Electric vehicles start like a charm in winter,” said Cara Clairman, president, and CEO of Plug’n Drive, a non-profit that seeks to answer consumer questions about electric vehicles (EVs).It’s a common Canadian winter experience. You turn the car’s ignition key and the engine makes a sickly “whirr-whirr” sound but does little else. It makes sense that extreme cold is brutal on batteries, so what happens to electric cars?

It’s an important question with another bitter cold snap settling over southern Ontario.

“Electric vehicles start like a charm in winter,” said Cara Clairman, president, and CEO of Plug’n Drive, a non-profit that seeks to answer consumer questions about electric vehicles (EVs).

“We don’t hear any stories of EV owners having trouble starting up their cars in the winter.”

That’s because EVs use electricity from the grid to warm and condition the battery while charging overnight. And Clairman says EV owners can program their vehicles to warm the interior so that more battery power can be dedicated to moving the car.

Keeping it warm

“Most of us plug in at night so that plug is keeping the battery nice and conditioned. In the morning, I can turn my car on remotely to warm the interior of the car,” she told CBC Toronto.

“It’s so great you get into a warm car and you’ve used your plug electricity to do that and you don’t waste your range.”

But extreme cold does have one noticeable effect on EVs: a dramatic drop in range.

“What you do find is the range is less when it’s bitterly cold. So in a -20 C or colder day you’re going to find a drop in range by 40 per cent,” said Clairman.

Keeping it running

That’s because not only do batteries have lower performance in colder temperatures, the car must draw power to keep the battery warm and heat the cabin — that reduces the distance you can drive.

Cara Clairman, president and CEO of Plug’n Drive, a non-profit that seeks to answer consumer questions about electric vehicles, says she often hears concerns about extreme cold weather’s effects on batteries.

“But Ontarians don’t drive all that far. We drive on average 30 to 50 km a day which any electric car on the market is going to do no matter how cold it is out,” said Clairman.

And she says EV owners can extend their range by using the seat and steering wheel heaters instead of warming up the entire cabin.

Clairman points out both gasoline and electric vehicles become less fuel efficient at colder temperatures, cutting the distance they can travel using the energy they carry.

And this bitter cold has taken its toll on the driving public, says the Canadian Automobile Association.

Electric cars can handle Canadian winter

“December 27th was their busiest day for service calls in the last four years with 9,149 calls for service,” said Nadia Mato of the CAA.

She says between Dec.19 to Jan. 3, the CAA received 87,017 calls for service in the area from Kingston to Windsor (excluding Niagara). A total of 35,241 calls were in the GTA.

Of that, battery calls alone accounted for 31,615 calls across the coverage area and 13,110 in the GTA, but none apparently were for EVs.

The dashboard display of a Chevy Bolt shows how much energy is being used to drive the car, heat the cabin and keep the battery warm.

“You can’t boost an electric battery. An electric vehicle needs to be charged, not boosted,” Mato said. “If you have a hybrid vehicle we can boost the vehicle, otherwise full electric vehicles require charging and not a boost. While we can’t boost them, we can tow the car to a charging station.”

But the CAA doesn’t specifically have a category for electric and electric hybrid vehicles, Mato says.

The Device You’re Using Right Now Has a Big Security Flaw — But You Don’t Have to Panic

by

It’s serious, but there are updates to minimize the impact and help you get on with your life

An attacker would need to gain access to an unpatched computer in order to pull off an attack using the Meltdown flaw. And while there is no patch for Spectre, software developers are already updating their apps to make them less susceptible to such an attack.

There’s almost certainly a critical security flaw or two in the device you’re using to read this story — but you don’t have to panic.

To varying degrees, the flaws affect processors found in virtually all computers and phones and could allow an attacker to access data stored in a device’s memory that should typically remain private.

The researchers announced the discovery publicly this week — calling the two bugs Meltdown and Spectre — and warned the security of everything from passwords and encryption keys to documents and photos could be at risk.

But while the problem is serious, and an inherent part of how most modern computer processors are designed to function, there are already efforts to minimize the impact and help you get on with your life.

What do I need to do?

For most people, the same advice, as usual, applies: Make sure the applications and operating systems on your phones, laptops, and other devices are up to date.

If you’re using a Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV, Apple recently rolled out an update that attempts to mitigate the problem, with more fixes on the way, according to the company.

Google says the latest version of Android already contains the necessary fixes, while Microsoft pushed out an automatic update for Windows users Wednesday night.

Computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system should automatically receive a software update designed to mitigate the Meltdown flaw disclosed by researchers this week.

PC users will also require a separate CPU update from whoever made their device (for example, Lenovo or HP). “By the end of next week, Intel expects to have issued updates for more than 90 percent of processor products introduced within the past five years,” the chipmaker said in a press release.

You’ll also want to update apps like your web browser and anti-virus software when they become available. Developers are beginning to roll out fixes to make it more difficult for sensitive user data to be accessed.

What are these updates trying to fix?

The two flaws let attackers access parts of a computer’s memory that they shouldn’t normally have access to, by abusing the way that computer processors are designed to handle information more quickly.

One of the flaws, called Meltdown, allowed the researchers to access data stored in the kernel — the core of a computer’s operating system, which runs in a protected part of a computer’s memory and effectively watches over everything your computer does.

By design, applications can’t access the kernel, a protection that’s built into the hardware of the CPU itself. But the researchers found a way around that, giving them access to the kernel and, from there, any data stored in a computer’s memory — which could include everything from passwords to photos. This attack has only been found to work on processors made by Intel.

“The bug basically melts security boundaries which are normally enforced by the hardware,” the researchers wrote.

One of the software flaws identified by researchers only affects processors made by Intel, while the other affects AMD and Intel chips as well. The processors are found in virtually all modern phones, computers, and servers.

The other flaw, called Spectre, allowed researchers to target data that applications store in a computer’s memory directly (typically, applications can’t access the memory used by other applications).

It’s related to Meltdown, but differs in a number of ways that the researchers detail in a pair of technical papers. This attack was found to work on Intel, AMD, and even ARM processors, which are commonly used in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

How would someone attack?

The same way that most other types of attacks work: by gaining access to your computer.

As such, the usual advice for dealing with malicious software applies here too. Install updates when they become available, and always scrutinize the apps you install, the files you open, and the links you click.

But everything will be fine now, right?

Sort of. While Meltdown can be patched, Spectre will be much more difficult to defend against long-term because of the way that CPUs are designed — and that’s worrying because it’s the vulnerability that affects a far wider range of chips.

The researchers say any Spectre-specific software patches for applications, operating systems or CPUs should be considered stopgaps while more research takes place.

“As it is not easy to fix, it will haunt us for quite some time,” the researchers wrote.

All of the big cloud providers — Amazon, Google and Microsoft — say their systems have been updated to help prevent Meltdown-style attacks, but customers are being advised to patch their own systems as well.

Who’s most at risk?

Home users aren’t at any more risk than usual when new bugs and flaws are discovered, as long as you install your updates.

For cloud computing providers on the other hand, this is a nightmare scenario.

In the cloud, multiple customers typically share the resources of a more powerful computer by running their applications and services in a so-called virtual machines. However, the researchers warn Meltdown can be used to access data from beyond the virtual machine — data from the host computer, or even inside other customers’ virtual machines.

All of the big cloud providers — Amazon, Google and Microsoft — say their systems have been updated to prevent Meltdown-style attacks, but customers are being advised to patch their own systems as well.

Why do these issues even exist?

The researchers sum it up pretty nicely in one of their papers: “The vulnerabilities in this paper, as well as many others, arise from a longstanding focus in the technology industry on maximizing performance” — but at the expense of security.

In fact, the flaws detailed by researchers this week are so fundamental to the design of modern processors that the only way to truly prevent any attacks is for Intel, AMD, and ARM to redesign their chips. In fact, the Software Engineering Institute’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) was especially blunt in its proposed solution: Get a new CPU.

Of course, that’s not going to be practical for most people and businesses, and so hardware and software companies are attempting to mitigate the two flaws’ effects with software updates the best they can.

Newly Formed Fertilizer Giant Nutrien Gets Top Marks From Analysts

by

Shares jump from $52.25 US to $55.18 US in a day

Laurentian Bank Securities and Bernstein rate Nutrien ‘buy’ and ‘outperform,’ respectively, while BMO assigned it a ‘market perform’ rating, according to Thomson Reuters.

Shares in newly formed Canadian fertilizer giant Nutrien Ltd. rose on its second day of trading Wednesday after CIBC assigned it an “outperformer” rating and set a 12-month price target of $62 US.

The bank — which had been restricted from comment because it had acted as an adviser to Calgary-based Agrium Inc. leading up to its merger with Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. — said in a report from analyst Jacob Bout that Nutrien has likely been “sandbagging” its estimate of $500 million US in cost-saving synergies from the deal.

The research note says there is possibly $100 million US in incremental savings that will be realized if the new company doubles its retail footprint — growing to grab a third of the U.S. market compared with about 19 per cent now — and more if it successfully rationalizes its wholesale operations.

The report says it could realize $125 million US in additional cost savings by reorganizing its potash assets. Along with about $5 billion US in proceeds from selling equity investments, the savings should allow the company to return cash to investors through share buybacks and dividends.

The shares, which started out at $52.25 US on Tuesday in New York, rose to $55.18 US by 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

According to Thomson Reuters, Laurentian Bank Securities and Bernstein rate Nutrien “buy” and “outperform,” respectively, while BMO assigned it a “market perform” rating.