Couldn’t read the paywalled article, but most of the commentary on social media seems to be people that completely misunderstand how their taxes on capital gains are calculated, like thinking the inclusion rate is how much tax is paid, or think that paying capital gains on a secondary property is a new thing. Really it’s paying around 8% more in taxes on the gain over $250k. Some think they’re getting taxed on the whole sale price, not just the increased value, some seem upset that they’re taxed on the “investment” that was bought with after tax dollars(even though capital gains is taxed lower than things like a regular investment account). Some think it’s somehow unfair to pay the capital gains on what they consider their retirement plan, even though they have the same option to put those gains into an RRSP to shelter it from taxes, they’re paying a lower inclusion rate than regular income.

One thing that seemed to come out that didn’t change much and seems a big deal to some, is if you want to pass the property to next of kin, make sure your estate is sitting on 25% of the increased value of the property to cover capital gains, or use a trust and pay the gains up front(though this just puts it off so the kids pay more gains to pass it to their kids) before it hits the estate.

I think that guy at the end has the right idea. If the employer wants proof of illness they should be required to pay for it. During the height of COVID in Sask, an group of healthcare providers published a generic note that said something like “it’s a pandemic, we don’t have time to create individual notes so this is our official recommendation that your employee stay home if they don’t feel well”. My last employer, we wouldn’t normally ask for a note, unless we noticed an issue or pattern(things like calling out monthly, or consistently calling out the first/last day of their week, etc.). Usually that involved a referral to a third party claim management company with the requirement that they consult with a doctor who determines if they’re fit for work, require accommodations, or are simply unfit to work. We should also expand protections relating to sick time to other emergencies like loss of childcare, failure of an essential appliance, etc..

My understanding is essentially Apple has enough money on hand and foresight of product demands that they can do things like tell a supplier that they’re going to buy everything well in advance and secure those deals before other manufacturers are willing to commit. Presumably, there’s nothing to stop Samsung from going to TSMC and saying they want to buy all the capacity for 2024, except that Samsung doesn’t feel confident about matching Apple’s sales volume on those upcoming products.

I’ve also heard Apple will also fund expansion of their suppliers when needed. If someone makes a thing that Apple wants but doesn’t have the capacity to meet Apple’s volume, Apple will provide what they need to increase capacity, along with providing commitments to purchase enough product that the manufacturer is taking on minimal risks from the expansion.

Common to get a big discount on the first purchase. That way it looks something like “just take 5 minutes to sign up here and you’ll get $30 off your purchase today”. I feel bad for the staff that have to push it, which gets me frustrated because I just want to buy my things and go, so I end up being rude to them.

I think part of the solution is to add some regulation that say that you should be able to close the account in the same way you open it. Let me sign up, get the $30 discount, pay the bill, close the account, and have them delete my personal information so I can do it over again next time. Few people doing that and it won’t be worth the effort for business to process everything.

“Save the Children” has been considered the cry of people that can’t put forth a reasonable argument for the thing they want for decades. Right up there with the people that like exclaiming “muh rights” and then either complain about something that’s never been a right, or immediately following up by trying to remove other people’s rights. I feel like using “save the children”(or similar variations) is a pretty good indication that I’m not going to agree with most of what follows.

My wife always gives me shit for trying to use this. Any job that involves communicating things like names or worse, random strings of letters, should train their staff to use it. Remember that part of the design was specifically to make it easier for people with English as a second language(or not at all) to still recognize the letters over potentially unreliable radio.

Seems most of the mail I get is various spam. I’ll pay an extra dollar for the things I want to mail if it means that the credit card companies are paying an extra dollar to send me their crap.

Agreed that pricing is something that needs to be addressed, but subsidizing individual orders through Canada Post isn’t a good solution. Better to subsidize bulk shipping to the local stores to bring down the price at the shelf. That’d get residents a better return for the amount of subsidy spent.

True, but a slow, steady growth is going to result in a better platform than having a flood of old redditors that take over. And that’s coming from a Reddit refugee, which I’d guess is a pretty significant portion of the user base these days. I saw a thread about Beehive considering leaving the fediverse altogether because they can’t keep up with all the fedderated content coming in that doesn’t meet their standards. I also think there needs to be further development of the software, things like users being able to block while instances(I’m fine with porn instances existing, but I don’t want them showing in my main feed and I don’t necessarily want to block everything labeled NSFW), as well as something comparable to the multi-Reddit system that lets me make groups of communities to browse together rather than just subscribed/home/all. The second would go a long way to getting that niche content communities up and running. The few niche communities that I have found seem to get buried under the more popular ones(which was an issue on Reddit for a long time too), so some method to bring that niche content to the surface on par with the bigger communities would go a long way too.

The thing is that while many companies have access to your data in various services, Apple has designed their systems such that they can’t access most user data. Can’t be both ways, your data is either private or not, and many would prefer it stay private.

As I understand the actual situation with iCloud and CSAM scanning is Apple does scan iCloud photos (the ones that users choose to upload to iCloud) if they can. A few years ago they tried to design a privacy focused version of that scanning that would allow them to access that kind of content for the purposes of reporting it, while preserving the users privacy. It was supposed to happen on device(while most companies only scan the photos on their servers) before the photos were uploaded, and use hashes to compare user photos to known CSAM material. This seemed an odd thing at the time, but a while after that Apple released end to end encryption for iCloud Photos, which means they can’t scan the uploaded photos anymore because they don’t have that access. Some have a theory that the big tech companies have regular contact with various government/law enforcement/etc. agencies and the on device scanning was a negotiated by them as a response to Apple’s plans to add E2E encryption to iCloud Photos, among other previously less secure services.

Because it’s not just a convection oven that’s needed, it’s also venting the moisture that comes off the product being cooked. It also needs to be powerful enough to keep the temperature up while that moist air gets exchanged. That’s a lot easier with a small cavity like an air-fryer than a regular sized oven. Commercial combi-ovens can do the same thing, and maybe there’s some high end consumer models available, but it’s a lot easier on the pocketbook to get an air fryer than a full size oven. I’m not totally sure, but they might also use impingement(concentrated streams of hot air, as opposed to just regular convection), which is another thing that’s available commercially, usually in pizza ovens or things like the merry-chef/turbo-chef(Subway’s sandwich toasters) but not common in consumer equipment.

This is true in central Canada too. Heat pumps get pushed saying they put out 3 times as much heat as the energy they use, but electricity is 7x the cost of natural gas.

Lots of people are going to complain about it, but having this context makes it more clear. I’ll bet that there’s precedence that things like a nod, physical thumbs up, uh huh, etc. constitute acceptance of contracts too. This could easily be an intentional act by the farmer to imply acceptance in a way that he thought wouldn’t hold legal weight if he decided to renege on it later. I wonder if the previous one word acceptances ended up in the farmers favour and the emoji just happened to be the one that didn’t.

That said, it’s also a good reminder on the other side that if you’re entering in a high value contract it’s good to ensure clear communications. While the case did work out in the buyers favour, a simple response of “is that an acceptance of the contract” would have saved a lot of time.

Been a little while since I looked up the utility rates, but last I remember gas is about 1/7 the cost of electricity in Saskatchewan. Makes it hard to justify heat pumps for heating in most places. Hope the technology continues to improve and it’ll be a more sustainable option when we have a more sustainable grid.

Colloquially, most people use “day” to mean how long it takes the sun to get to the same place in the sky. Solar day vs sidereal day, the difference is only about 4 minutes on Earth, but can be much greater elsewhere. Venus’ solar day is about 117 Earth days, so you would see a couple sunrises/sunsets each Venusian year.

This is right. A proper system has a transfer switch that prevents back feeding the grid if it’s down. There’s also a safety aspect in that supplying power to the branch circuit in this way bypasses the overcurrent protection, so one could potentially be loading that circuit with 5 A on top of its rated load and cause significant damage.

If a person wants to offset their electricity at this small scale, better to have it powering a shed or charging power tool batteries. Won’t get as good a return, but you’d never get a return on a permitted grid tied system at that scale either.

Except that the gospel of Mark specifically states that it wasn’t fig season. Why did Jesus even look for the figs when he should have known they were out of season. Why then curse the tree when it was just doing what fig trees are supposed to do? Guess Jesus can be an ass when he’s hangry.

Eclecticlight has some of the best articles I’ve seen in terms of how Apple’s “it just works” actually does or doesn’t work under the hood. MacRumors forums are one of the better places I’ve found to interact with the community for those niche issues/use cases that only come up for a handful of people. The Mac Geek Gab podcast is another place where enthusiasts can come together to share tips tricks and cool stuff found.

This here. I still check Reddit regularly, but I’m mostly just checking in on a handful of communities, not nearly as much engagement as last month, so if daily active users is their metric then I guess I haven’t moved the needle, but if it’s about actual API usage, number of posts viewed, votes given, comments made, etc. it’s probably 5-10% of what it used to be.

Even in places where they have to use the actual ingredients, there’s a lot of tricks to making it look different in photos. That burger might only be partially cooked to reduce shrinkage, then the burger and bun are frozen so they hold shape for the photo. Vegetables carefully picked out and arranged, tomato/pickles blotted dry, and the sauce applied with an eye dropper to provide visual balance after the rest of the burger is stacked.

I will say from my experience, that tends to apply to advertising photography for large franchises. If we’re taking about food photography associated with a high profile event or restaurant where food is actually served, there’s minimal difference between the photo plate and what’s actually served. Sometimes the photo plate is just one picked out while producing the ones being served, sometimes it’s the first/last plate and a person takes a minute to pick out the best looking of ingredients from the same container that was used to serve the rest. Sometimes it’s just an extra minute arranging the plate nicely compared to the last 150 that were done quickly to keep up with service. Often the photographer then gets to eat the plate they’ve just photographed.