Clearview asserts that they are not bound by Canadian law because they don't have "substantial connections" to Canada. They have a point and any judgement that might be obtained against them is likely to have no direct consequences for them. However, it does have consequences for potential customers located in or otherwise subject to Canadian law. And that is probably the point of this "action".

They also allege that obtaining photos from public sources isn't surveillance or a privacy issue. They probably have a point there, too. There are, however, other potential issues with doing that. (Copyright, perhaps? Especially if they actually distribute the photos to anyone.)

It sounds like GitHub's operating legal theory here is that the takedown notice is not proper because the MPA doesn't have standing to file the takedown. I can't think of any other way they could take unilateral action of this sort without opening themselves to major liability.

Presumably the theory is that if he isn't extradited, he's less likely to commit suicide.

Well, that's not strictly true. But the way advertising convinces customers is often far less direct than you would expect.

It's about name recognition so potential customers will remember the name and be more inclined to buy that product instead of a competing one. In this case, negative publicity can actually be beneficial, paradoxically, as long as the potential customer remembers the name but not why they remember the name. It also goes to reminding customers that a brand or product still exists, which is why you see established brands advertising periodically. This applies to goods *and* services. Name recognition is why those weird commercials that make no sense whatsoever but end with a shot of the product and a name card exist. Also some of those ad campaigns that tell multipart narratives. Etc.

It's also about creating buzz around a brand or product. This hasn't historically been primarily aimed at end customers. It is often actually aimed at buyers for supermarkets, department stores, and the like. After all, the end customer can't buy your product if store they shop at doesn't sell it, right? So a lot of advertising is aimed at the people who choose what gets stocked by shops to get them to stock the products to customers can buy them. With direct online sales, this is less important these days, but it still plays a role for products that might be stocked by shops. Of course, this also doesn't apply so much for services (professional or otherwise).

And, yes, advertising does need to convince the end customer that they want to buy the product in many cases. Especially for luxury goods or services. Here, simple name recognition is probably not enough, especially when you have competition. In that case, you have to give reasons why a customer should choose your product or service. But you also need to advertise to people who don't already have your product or service, and that's hard. Which is why a good ad campaign serves all three goals: name recognition, buzz generation, and convincing the customer to buy.

I think a lot of companies either forgotten or never knew what the real purpose of advertising is. They got in a mode where they think throwing more money at an ad campaign will make it perform better. And, of course, advertising companies benefit from that so they won't set their customers straight. Mix in a liberal dose of not recognizing how the market has changed with the advent of the interweb, and you get massive overspending on advertising with little or no benefit.

Basically, cutting an advertising campaign that is poorly implemented and/or poorly targetted leading to no change in outcome is hardly surprising.

"You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?" ... *dejected* "Allow".

Some stuff this exam software does is probably illegal and much of the rest of it is cargo culting at its finest. That includes a lot of non-software measures, too. Some of it is up there with flagging common three or four word sequences in English as plaigiarism because a paper happens to use English normally and is compared through some automated "AI" means against some sample that also uses English normally.

It would be marginally less bad if this "exam" software was competently implemented. But it's not. And a lot of it is malware and/or spyware ridden garbage. I mean, that's the point of it, right? It's literally spyware (which probably makes it illegal in many jurisdictions if it was ever properly investigated).

My sister was taking some sort of remote course a few years ago and the exam software that was *mandated* by the course tripped *Microsoft's* malware detector. And their answer? Turn off your antivirus and security software. It was also impossible to uninstall afterward. Even after "fixing" the A/V "issue", it made her computer completely unstable and, thus, unusable for writing the exam in the first place.

"Google had determined he had broken their terms of service, though they didn't explain exactly what had happened..."

Yeah. So they're probably lying. They *must* know what he did or they couldn't have legitimately made such a determination. That means they're being dishonest by not explaining what the violation was (probably because they can't) or they're lying about him breaking their terms of service. (Assuming he's reporting accurately, but it's plausible enough at least.) There's also a chance they were served with some sort of clandestine order from some authority requiring them to terminate his account, but even with the state of the world today, it's more likely to be some action Google took on their own.

It's the whole "if you don't know what you did wrong, I'm sure not going to tell you!" Anyone who's been on the receiving end of that from someone knows how bleeping stupid it is.

Indeed. I get the occasional "adsense policy violation report" from Google related to a business venture. But not once has the violation report or their dashboard ever given me enough information to figure out what the violation is, let alone where it is. I really do wonder how they expect anyone to deal with those "violations" if they won't provide any information.

Let me be clear at the start: I am reasonable certain that UBI is a very bad idea at this point in history and I do not support it. But this is a comment section on the interwebs so I'm going to pontificate anyway.

If we're doing to do universal basic income, the following needs to come with it (and this is why limited pilot programs in the past have failed):

* eliminate all minimim wages
* eliminate unemployment benefits
* eliminate publicly funded pensions
* eliminate welfare (supports for people who can't work, etc.)
* the same amount goes to every individual regardless of means (yes, even the rich people get it; it wouldn't be universal otherwise)
* none of it gets clawed back due to earning money elsewhere
* the amount needs to be set based on a reasonable subsistence income in a *reasonable* market. That means people will have to move out of the crazy expensive markets or find work to make up the difference. The same goes for luxurious lifestyles. It *must not* be used to try to lift people out of "poverty" since if it works, the people on UBI who are not working *will* be the low income/poverty line people.

I would also argue that the following is also needed for things to work:

* proper universal health care (which needs to include basic dental and vision care). The absolute hot mess that is the US health care system need not apply here.
* no fractional reserve lending; let the central bank print money when more is needed for economic liquidity rather than relying on commercial banks to print money. (Yes, lending money you don't have *is* printing money. And that's exactly what fractional reserve (and no reserve) lending is.)

This starts to sound a lot like the start of a slippery slope toward "communism", doesn't it?

I can't imagine how anyone might have predicted that covering half a face would make it harder to recognize. I mean, duh. I mean, even the best[1] face recognizers out there (you know, the human type creatures that have the faces?) have trouble when half the face is covered.

[1] Probably debatable but it doesn't detract from the point, really.

What you're missing is that "....larger trials are underway" according to the summary. You don't start with large scale trials. You start smaller to see if it's even worth pursuing at larger scale, and also so you put fewer people at risk if it turns out to be particularly dangerous. Then you move to a large scale trial.

So it's Starbridge Systems again? I mean, that was ages ago that they supposedly had on the fly reconfiguring computers that you could shoot holes in an they would keep on ticking.

How is this not extortion?

No, don't answer that with a legal dissertation on the definition of extortion, etc. I do know how they get away with this sort of thing. It's a fundamental flaw in the way we have our laws set up in parts of the world.

I'm convinced that most of the useless stuff I have is kept simply because it's been there for a while. This is especially the case when it's not really in the way I only have to interact with it infrequently. Largely an "out of sight, out of mind" thing. And then when I notice something that I probalby don't need, it gets filed under "meh. I'll deal with it later." Of course, you all know when "later" is. Eventually, it gets to the point of "it's just the stuff I have" and no further thought.

Often, I think the "I might need this some day" is a rationalization for laziness that eventually becomes a way of life.

It seems rather like screen size and viewing distance would have a huge impact on whether "8k" would be better or not. I mean, if you're going to put a picture up on a wall sized screen intended for viewing at a distance of a few feet, then higher resolution might make sense. But viewed from a reasonable distance on a screen the size of a reasonable television, it probably doesn't make all that much difference. Especially once you consider that it's going to be compressed into oblivion to fit it down the data pipes. After all, if you double the pixel density on both axes, you have four times the pixels and, thus, four times the data that has to be compressed by the video codec. Sure, it will probably get lucky and be able to throw away a lot of that, but it still increases the required bitrate non-trivially if you actually want 8k quality, especially in high motion scenes.

You know what? It doesn't matter if his desire for a better flu vaccine is selfish or not. The result is the same: more funding for research into making a better flu vaccine. And vaccination is one of those things where the selfish goals of the rich are best furthered by sharing the results with the general population. The more people with immunity to a disease, the less likelihood the rich people get sick so it's in their best interest to share the results of this sort of research, and even fund vaccination campaigns.