Most online arguments are pretty easy to ignore, but sometimes the arguments are about how to spend billions of dollars on a world-changing technology.

In 2021, when MIT researchers proved that nuclear fusion — how stars combine atoms to generate energy — could be replicated to provide power here on Earth, there was a caveat: The superconducting magnets needed were so large and costly that the process was light-years away from being practical. 

Some new ground rules from our southern neighbour are putting Canadian cattle at risk of losing their honourary dual citizenship. 

What happened: This week, the U.S. issued new, more restrictive guidelines for when “Product of USA” labels can be used on meat, poultry, and eggs. The move is meant to help U.S. farmers, but experts expect it to hit Canada’s agriculture sector hard in the process. 

Telegram, it’s not just for your journo friends anymore. 

Driving the news: Encrypted messaging app Telegram is mulling a U.S.-listed IPO, its owner Pavel Durov told the Financial Times, after surpassing 900 million monthly active users and projecting it will hit profitability within the next year thanks to newfound ad dollars. 

Arts and culture festivals could sadly be following the woolly mammoth trajectory — once prominent across Canada, but slowly on their way to extinction. 

Driving the news: The shockingly sudden cancellation of this year’s Just for Laughs comedy festivals in Montréal and Toronto has brought to light the dire state of the business of festivals in Canada. Everything from music fests to theatre fests are struggling.

A new type of retreat is going after a demographic that needs more R&R than perhaps any other: new parents. 

Driving the news: Last month, Alma Care — a retreat for mothers who have just given birth — officially opened in Toronto. Per the owner, it’s the first facility of its kind in Canada, offering new moms cozy rooms, doula consultations, masseuses, and a staffed nursery. 

Niagara Falls, the CN Tower, and even the world’s largest coffee pot aren’t enough to lure Chinese tourists back to Canada.

Driving the news: Last year, only 225,100 Chinese visitors came to Canada, down from ~750,000 tourists seen before the pandemic, according to recent StatCan data. The loss in the big-spending Chinese market is a blow for Canada's still-recovering tourism industry. 

In next month’s federal budget, the feds are poised to put forward a framework legislation to bring open banking to the financial system. What is that, exactly? We’re glad you asked.  

Driving the news: Open banking is a system that lets users decide how their financial data is shared. Under the framework, banks would share a customer’s financial data with third parties, like fintech apps, via APIs.

The plan to bring the excitement of day trading to the experience of buying a Baconator didn’t pan out for Wendy’s, but the concept could be coming to more restaurants soon. 

Driving the news: Wendy’s backtracked on its plan to implement so-called surge pricing into its fast-food joints, but some in the restaurant industry say dynamic pricing — where prices fluctuate frequently based on demand — could soon become commonplace.

Sure, it’s easy to poke fun at cheesy cash-for-gold infomercials, but maybe the Russell Olivers of the world knew something we didn’t about where gold prices were heading.

What happened: The price of gold reached a new all-time high of US$2,185 per ounce on Friday, part of a rally that’s seen gold’s value jump 30% since the end of 2022. 

Of all the days to decide how the constitution should define the duties of women in society, Irish voters headed to the polls on International Women’s Day to cast their votes. 

Driving the news: Yesterday’s referendum posed two questions to citizens — to vote “yes” or “no” to loosen the definition of family and to remove references to a woman’s role being solely as a caregiver within the home, long seen as crucial to the “common good” of society.  

 On this week’s episode of Free Lunch by The Peak, we sat down with Chris Walker, the CEO of Canadian AI chip maker, Untether AI, to talk about the future of the industry.   

Buckle up, folks; we’re going through the ins and outs of the U.S. government vs. TikTok. 

What happened: A U.S. House of Representatives committee voted unanimously to advance a proposed bill forcing TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its ownership stake in the app within 165 days, lest the app be banned in the country entirely.

Prompt engineering might not be the path to AI riches it has been made out to be.

How can I get my idea turned into an emoji?

You’ll need to submit it to the Unicode Consortium, which begins accepting proposals again on April 2.

It turns out that a sci-fi-looking orb that scans and stores your biological data might raise some questions from privacy regulators.

As anyone who reluctantly hits the treadmill knows, the last mile is always the hardest. That’s also true of parcel delivery. 

What happened: Calgary-based Ziing — focused on solutions for “last-mile delivery,” the final leg of package delivery — is acquiring newspaper publisher Torstar’s parcel-delivery unit for an undisclosed amount. The deal will give Ziing an extra ~30,000 weekly deliveries.

The last time the IPO market in Canada was this bad, the sitcom Friends debuted, Forrest Gump hit theatres, and a guy named Jeff Bezos launched a little book shop called Amazon. 

Driving the news: It’s been one year since the Toronto Stock Exchange saw its last initial public offering, with one analyst telling Bloomberg that the “economy isn’t focused on the sectors where investors want to put their money,” including technology and healthcare.

Like a student who hasn’t been paying attention during class, the Canadian Armed Forces are unprepared and hoping they don’t get called on.

Driving the news: Just 58% of Canadian troops who are meant to respond to a potential crisis in a NATO nation are actually ready to do so, per a Department of National Defence report seen by the CBC, mainly due to a lack of personnel and a lack of ready-to-use equipment.