You might see short term savings on some things during the economic turbulence, but overall it will make things more expensive in the short and long term.

For things that Canada is a net exporter of, like Canola, you might see a sudden oversupply when exports stop, and then cheaper products. In the long term, farms will adjust or go out of business. The expenses that come along with that wind up on the consumer eventually.

For manufactured items, if a business is shifting to solely domestic markets, they lose a lot of economies of scale which again increases costs.

Overall, free trade is a mixed bag. It ultimately saves consumers money, but leads to larger multinational businesses and reduced national autonomy.

Unwinding free trade gives up the reduced costs and costs a lot of money in retooling and reestablishing supply chains etc.

I’ve read that the main reason Google funds Mozilla is to prevent a monopoly situation. I bet they’ll stay committed.

Mozilla really does need to diversify their funding though.

Sure, Amazon doesn’t want hundreds of extra lawsuits, but the staff also don’t want to waste their money on legal fees for a suit that’s a guaranteed loss. Case law is very well-established.

What’s with the assumption that it’s the law that is keeping Amazon from mass-firing staff who won’t come in?

The approach they’re taking is just a smart business decision. It allows them to spread the disruptions out so they’re more manageable, to keep employees who’s skills justify flexibility in the WFH rules, and prevents the PR impact of a mass termination.

The laws are pretty different for contract workers vs W2 employees. W2 employees can have contracts, but it’s really rare outside of unions. Conditions of employment can in most cases be changed at the employers discretion.

I feel a little bit like I’m defending Amazon here, but I’m really trying to highlight that our worker protections are crap in the US. Unions are really the way to go if employees want security. Tech industry has way too few unions.

This is true for contract workers, but I believe we’re talking about W2 employees, who rarely have a contract if they’re not part of a union.

Do you have experience with employment law?

An employee could argue discrimination, but they’d have to have evidence that it was due to a protected class to have any success, and those cases are notoriously hard to prove. In every state that I’m aware of, they can fire people selectively for not coming into the office, while keeping others employed.

Employment laws are state-by-state, but I don’t know a single one where it’s illegal to fire someone for not coming into the office.

For the folks who don’t know The singer from POTUSA sings kids music as Casper Babypants and his songs are bangers that my 11 month old daughter and I both enjoy equally.

I have a baby monitor, and considered using an IP camera before buying it. The reason I like mine is because I’ve got a separate little handheld monitor on RF instead of wifi. There’s a handful of situations where it’s fine in very handy. Our nanny could use it without us having to set her up with any tech. Works while traveling without having to deal with hotel Wi-Fi or hot spots. Works outside much further than my wifi reaches. I like the RF.

What the hell. That classifies almost anyone who goes on vacation as rich.

You wouldn’t be at burning man then. It’s obviously a very different experience.

There’s a somewhat universal standard for publishing transit information. Not all agencies are fully compliant, but most are on some level.

The repositories for the big distros are so full that you rarely need to ever install anything that isn’t already there for you. I use a crapload of software, and I have literally one thing that I’ve installed that I downloaded from the internet. All updates are handled by the package manager, so there aren’t dozens of services running to check for updates. Installing software on linux was already so much easier, byt Flatpak and SNAP have made it absurdity simple.

On windows, you literally go to some website download an executable, and run it. Every time I need to do it for work, I’m shocked that it’s such a messy and insecure setup.

Maybe it’s because I’m so accustomed to Excel, but Libreoffice Calc is so painful to use. Not the app that’s going to win people over.