Provinces and federal government set taxes on gasoline, cigarrettes and alcohol. The amount they can tax (as much as the consumer will bear) is likely highly researched. They want to tax as much as possible without discouraging reduced consumption, or alternative sourcing.
The advice to ignore competitors and focus on customer feedback is great when you're small and a solo Dev. As the company grows and you can dedicate other resources, you can start monitoring and selectively copying competitors. I'd still say that internal iteration is a better path though.
Having spent time with Muslim friends around Ramadan, I have no doubt that this is due to OVEREATING after sunset and before sunrise. I've seen people pack 3000 calories into 2 meals when they should be getting 1500-2000, especially with the reduced activity levels due to lower energy.
Fasting doesn't give you the ability to break rules of biology.
This is irresponsible reporting, and irresponsibly ethically.
Those companies aren't putting out GHG for fun. They're manufacturing products every single person on the planet is consuming. Those companies, while they could play a huge role in taking leadership, aren't the problem.
Every single person reading the article let is the problem. You can't externalize this responsibility. You have to take responsibility for yourself and if possible, influence others yourself. This doesn't have to be advocacy, you can go out and start a lower-emissions competitor, or donate to carbon sequestering/scrubbing initiatives.
With trees and porous materials, this is known as "wicking". With humans and biology, it's the clotting factor that prevents bleeding out. There are downsides to this as well, blood clots in veins and arteries can cause heart attacks, strokes.
I read about this recently and found it fascinating - specifically related to tree height, but alludes to other implications.
I've been recommending my clients avoid using it for minimum 6 months post "release" regardless of accessibility.
Gutenberg has been changing constantly. When it's "released" it should only be released as a final version to developers, meaning they're no longer changing it, before being released to the public.
I've known a few people who've developed Gutenberg compatible plugins, only to have it break 2 weeks later when an "update" arrived. "Update" meaning "it's been redone entirely different".
It's been noted elsewhere here - use the official "classic editor". Gutenberg offers ZERO benefits. It's simply a different way of accomplising the same tasks.
Usually $0.60-$0.70/sqft. Some terribly built and managed buildings are higher. If you're at 600 square feet I wouldnt expect to pay more than $450/month.
This is however much less than the repairs and maintenance on a house. Replacing a roof? Furnace? Lawn work? Have fun.
Plus having concierge to receive packages for you is fantastic.
They're small, to be sure. You get 400-500 square feet. Enough to eat, sleep, work a little from home and watch movies with company. Perfectly livable. There's both modern and older buildings at that price range.
I live in Toronto. It's relatively expensive, but the rent prices don't factor in tons of things:
1. You don't need a car, carshares like Zipcar work great, which saves $1000/month ($200/month parking, $200/month insurance, $300/month gas, $300/month lease/maintenance)
2. Stress level and commutes - walking is a pleasure (especially with the PATH in the winter), while driving is stressful and harmful to your health. The 1-2 he you save daily with commutes/driving is life that you get back.
3. Opportunity cost - you can do 2-3 free meetups/events per week to meet new people and network. The interchange of ideas and connections is priceless
4. You don't need a house. A house is a luxury and so is having kids.
You can still find 1br units for $1500-$2000/month. Condos are for sale in the city for $400,000.
It's not that living in Toronto is expensive. It's people's misconception that owning a house and having children are basics, when they're actually luxuries. My response to not being able to afford living in the city while spending on other luxuries is usually too bad. Figure out your priorities and make sacrifices.
This is more of a problem with time frames. Wooden houses last 100-200 years if very well built. I've seen teardowns after 50, sometimes less. What's the environmental cost of building 4 wood buildings to last as long as 1 concrete building?
Concrete construction lasts centuries. And if torn down, can be crushed and after separated from rebar, re-used as aggregate in another project.
Physically demanding doesn't necessarily mean heavy. Moving at a rapid pace for extended periods is considered physically demanding.
If you're in regular shape at 50 or 60, this is tiring but absolutely doable for a few days or weeks. I'd even argue that it's healthy to physically push yourself.
But someone else noted that these temp workers aren't expected to hit the same output.
When I was _forced_ into the windows 10 update, it went through the process and appeared to finish but didn't put my desktop back. No problem I figured, they put it somewhere.
So I did a file search, found the desktop in a folder, moved it back to the desktop.
A day later it self-restarted and _completed the update_, replacing the desktop with the now empty desktop folder.
I went to the Microsoft store to get them to do a file recovery and they had the _gall_ to tell me it would be $250 plus 7 days and they wouldn't guarantee recovery.
I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98.
There's definitely something to be said about economies of scale and efficiency.
But I'm talking about design and product expertise. People sourcing knockoffs can create a cheaper version 1 of a product, but only a brand connected to it's customers will use their feedback for version 2, 3, 4, n+1.
I'm a little insulated in the food niche because product quality and freshness and expiry dates are huge risk factors, but this applies to other industries as well.
You can buy a knock-off Amazon branded chain lubricant from China that lists the same ingredients if you want, and it may work well in low impact situations. But for my motorcycle, you bet your ass I'm spend 2-3x the lowest price I can find on Amazon for a well known brand with a reputation and uses quality inputs and filters and has no additives. When my health is on the line, brand expertise is essential.
Same with food. There's a floor for quality, and you can't escape the value trade-off. Something being cheaper doesn't mean it's quality is unaffected, but the short-term, inexperienced people at Amazon don't care about that.
I can buy and sell our "product" at half price by buying last year's crop or a lower grade, and I can sell that garbage exclusively through Amazon and "win" the completion, but nobody really wins in that case - me or the customer or our competitors - only Amazon.
I've seen this happen too. And have some insight from the seller side:
6 companies might sell the same product at varying prices, some of them uploading 1000s of items they have dropshopping for, but no real inventory. 1 or 2 may legitimately sell the product at a manually entered price that's competitive - when those sellers sell out, the others who dropship at cost+100% show up as the default seller.
The big dropshippers make their profit off infrequent, high margin sales that can be auto fulfilled when legitimate sellers run out of inventory.
I can't speak to mom and pop shops in small towns. I think while the concept is the same, this would be more along the lines of the town opening it's own discount store and putting the mom and pops out of business.
But I can attest to 2 products I've ordered yearly for the past 3 years, increase in price about 10% each year. The diversity of competing products has decreased substantially.