Quotulatiousness

September 30, 2022

“To maintain the illusion of free, all our online activities are sinking into spam, scam, and sham”

Filed under: Business, Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Gioia on the insatiable growth of predatory behaviour from providers of “free” content online:

The biggest trick the Devil ever played was convincing people that online stuff is free. But the Devil always collects, sooner or later — and we are starting to learn the actual terms of this cursed deal.

Consider some recent news stories:

  • YouTube has been testing users’ willingness to watch 10 unskippable ads on a video. And the ads aren’t spaced out. They come at you, one right after the other, at the outset — because Google wants to be paid first, even if the video sucks.
  • Nobody wants ads on iPhone, but they’re coming. Executives at Apple are allegedly planning to triple the ad revenue from phones.
  • “For some Google searches literally the whole screen on Google is ads.”
  • TikTok can track a user’s every keystroke, and Beijing has “access to everything”.
  • “Scams are showing up at the top of online searches.”
  • Snapchat has been forced to pay $35 million for storing and selling users’ biometric information without permission.
  • Even if you pay for ad-free streaming, Spotify inserts ads in podcasts.
  • Ads are coming to Netflix too.
  • Etc. etc. etc.

This is what happens when “free” really isn’t free — but consumers prefer to stay in denial. Go ahead and rob me, just make sure I’m not looking when it happens.

It’s even worse than that. Web users are now hooked on free — and like all addictions, this one is far costlier than you realize at the outset.

You have more leverage when you negotiate an actual price. When I cancel a paid subscription, the corporate provider always comes back with a special offer to get me to reconsider. But how much bargaining power do I have if I refuse to click on those “terms and conditions” that always come with the free stuff?

I’ll answer that for you — none at all.

How bad will it get? YouTube described its ten unskippable ads as a “test” — but this wasn’t done in a laboratory or with volunteers. They just forced it on users, and watched them squirm. And squirm they did.

In fact, one person reported a 12-ad blitz.

This wouldn’t be so bad if it was just one business or sector of the economy that played these games. But this is the de facto business model for the entire digital economy. To maintain the illusion of free, all our online activities are sinking into spam, scam, and sham. Everything from sending an email to sharing a photo gets monitored and monetized by big tech companies — and often you’re the last person to find out what the real price is.

History Re-Summarized: The Roman Empire

Filed under: Europe, History, Humour, Italy, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 16 Sept 2022
The plot twist of Rome is that it was always a mess, now sit back and enjoy the marble-covered mayhem.

This video is a Remastered, Definitive Edition of three previous videos from this channel — “History Summarized: The Roman Empire”, “History Hijinks: Rome’s Crisis of the Third Century”, and “History Summarized: The Fall of Rome”. This video combines them all into one narrative, fully upgrading all of the visuals and audio, with a substantially re-written script in parts 1 and 3.
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Witness about to testify on Bill C-11? Time to break out good old Parliamentary bullying and intimidation tactics!

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It’s had to believe, but the Liberal government continues to defy expectations in their continued mission to prevent public participation in political processes, as Michael Geist documents here:

“In the east wing of the Centre Block is the Senate chamber, in which are the thrones for the Canadian monarch and consort, or for the federal viceroy and his or her consort, and from which either the sovereign or the governor general gives the Speech from the Throne and grants Royal Assent to bills passed by parliament.”
Photo and description by Saffron Blaze via Wikimedia Commons.

The Senate Bill C-11 hearings have provided a model for the much-needed, engaged, non-partisan inquiry that was largely missing from the House committee’s theatrics in which the government cut off debate on over 150 amendments. But this week those hearings attracted attention for another reason: serious charges of witness intimidation and bullying by government MPs, most notably Canadian Heritage Parliamentary Secretary Chris Bittle (yes, the same Bittle who last month suggested I was a racist and a bully for raising concerns about Minister Pablo Rodriguez silence over Canadian Heritage funding of an anti-semite as part of its anti-hate program).

The Globe and Mail reported late on Tuesday night that Bittle – together with his colleague, Liberal MP Lisa Hepfner – had sent a letter to the Lobbying Commissioner to seek an investigation into the funding of Digital First Canada, a group representing digital first creators. The letter may have been shopped around to other MPs as Liberal MP Anthony Housefather has told the Globe he did not sign it. DFC’s Executive Director, Scott Benzie, had appeared before the Heritage committee months ago and Bittle used his time to focus on the organization’s funding. Leaving aside the fact that government MPs reserve these kinds of questions only for critics of Bill C-11 (there were no similar questions this week from Ms. Hepfner to the Director of Digital Content Next, whose organization supports Bill C-18 and counts Fox News among its members), the timing of Globe story was incredibly troubling. The Lobbyist Commissioner letter was apparently filed nearly two months ago and Benzie had been assured that he was compliant with the law. Yet the story was presumably leaked to coincide with Benzie’s appearance before the Senate committee last night.

The letter and leak smacked of witness intimidation and bullying with the government seeking to undermine critics of the legislation hours before a Senate appearance. Indeed, the entire tactic felt like the policy equivalent of a SLAPP suit, which are used to intimidate and silence critics through litigation. By the end of the day, the tactic had clearly backfired on Bittle and the government. Conservative MP John Nater filed a point of privilege in the House of Commons, arguing that Bittle had attempted to intimidate a Senate witness.

    I rise on a question of privilege, for which I gave notice earlier this same day, regarding the conduct of the member for St. Catharines, who attempted to intimidate Scott Benzie, a witness appearing before a committee of the Senate studying Bill C-11, an act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other acts, as reported yesterday by the Globe and Mail.

    While I appreciate that this attempt to intimidate relates to proceedings of a Senate committee currently studying Bill C-11, the culprit in this case is a member of the House, and that same witness appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage during its deliberations on Bill C-11, an appearance where Mr. Benzie, no doubt, first established himself as an undesirable witness for the government on the merits of Bill C-11.

The government response was surprisingly muted with MP Mark Gerretsen simply asking for a couple of days to formulate a response, perhaps recognizing that defending Bittle would mean defending the indefensible.

M1C Sniper Garand

Filed under: History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 18 Sep 2016

The M1C was an M1 Garand with a telescopic sight, using a mounting system developed by the Griffin & Howe company of New York. It utilized a rail pinned and screwed to the left side of the receiver, coupled with a quick-release scope on top. The rails had to be installed prior to heat treating the receivers, which had the unfortunately consequence of preventing rifles form being chosen for sniper conversion based on their mechanical accuracy. Instead, accuracy would be tested only after rifles were complete, leading to a 60% rejection rate.

The scope was offset to the left of the receiver so as not to interfere with the Garand’s clip loading, and issued with a leather cheek pad to give the shooter’s cheek weld a matching offset to the left. The scope used with the M1C was the M73B1, later replaced with the M81 and M82 scopes — all military versions of the 2.5x Lyman Alaskan hunting scope (which was a very good piece of equipment despite its low magnification)

The M1C was adopted in 1944, but production and quality control delays would prevent it from seeing any action in WWII. It was in use during the Korean War, however, before being replaced by the M1D.
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QotD: Many media people are folks “who Don’t Read Shit” about the stories they “report” on

Filed under: Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Without wading back into the exceptionally complicated details of that long controversy, I learned two things from the experience that have never left me.

First, as I traveled to Boston to go to court, and as I wracked up PACER charges downloading legal briefs and judicial orders, I would have email exchanges with newspaper reporters who wanted me to tell them what had happened. I would shoot back an email message that said, “Judge’s ruling attached,” and they would reply, “Yeah, saw the attachment, what does it say?”

Over two years, through events in a trial court and in an appellate court, with multiple parties pursuing complicated and divergent courses, reporters would not read. They wouldn’t read the 40-page legal briefs filed by the lawyers for all the competing sides, but they also wouldn’t read a three-page order from a judge. They would not read, period. They wanted the tl;dr, in a sentence or two. “Yeah, what’s it say?”

In our own moment, I remain extremely confident that the flood of bullshit like this […] is being slopped out by people who DRS — who Don’t Read Shit — about the topic they cover. Somebody in a government agency shot this dude an email message that said COVID VACCINES ARE MIRACLE DRUGS EVERYONE SHOULD GET THEM, and he said to himself, “Miracle drugs, got it!” We’re plagued by an army of people who pour “information” into the world based on two Twitter posts and a text message, after a full three to five seconds of deep thought …

Chris Bray, “Chris Bray is Stupid and Evil”, Tell Me How This Ends, 2022-04-07.

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