In an ever-globalizing world, multilingual text becomes more and more important. It is essential to ensure that translations are accurate and properly formatted. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to do so, leading to humorous or even embarrassing results. One example of this is the student union at the University of Edinburgh whose massive welcome sign in Arabic had two mistakes in it despite being printed on a wall. This demonstrates how easy it can be for non-Arabic speakers to spot mistranslations, yet how often they go unnoticed by those responsible for them.

The real estate market in Canada is facing a massive housing crisis, largely due to companies like Ourboro who allow investors to “piggyback” their cash investment on your mortgage qualification so they can bid more for the home against other buyers. This practice is detrimental to the real estate market and should not be allowed in Canada. One of the issues with Ourboro is that it allows investors to use your mortgage qualification as a way of making money from the real estate market. Let’s say you have a downpayment of $200k and Ourboro gives you an additional $100k, then they own 50% of any appreciation that occurs in the next 10 years. If your property appreciates by $500k over this time period, Ourboro will take $250k along with their initial deposit. This makes it difficult for buyers to make any significant profit off their property if it doesn’t appreciate at least 2 times what they paid into it.

The 3.5 mm headphone jack is a feature that many people take for granted, but its absence in the latest smartphones has caused quite a stir. Fans of the small form factor of phones have had to resort to wireless earbuds or adapters in order to use their favorite headphones. But now, with the appearance of a new niche phone that comes with a 3mm headphone jack, users can rejoice!

Coffee lovers have long spent significant amounts of money in the pursuit of the perfect brew, but often all that is needed is a few pieces of simple equipment. An AeroPress, Chestnut C2 hand grinder, and some good quality beans are all that’s required to make a great cup of coffee. The AeroPress was designed with simplicity in mind and there are just a few variables to adjust including grind size, water temperature and immersion time.

Flatpak is a popular Linux package format that has quickly become the go-to for many users, especially those who don’t use Debian-based distributions such as Ubuntu. It offers a low-friction way to install and maintain applications without having to worry about versioning issues or compatibility with different distros. Recently, Flathub opened up the ability for applications to be uploaded in binary form, which is essential for language-specific build systems like Electron/Node, Rust, Go etc. However, this means that users are unable to scrutinise the source code of their application in the Flathub build system. To address this problem many advocates of Flathub suggest running an antivirus scanner rather than looking further into why they can’t inspect the source code before installing it - an absurd premise indeed!