I sure hope this doesn’t happen but if things get bad enough? We could see people do something like burn Air BNB’s to the ground. If enough of them go up in smoke, insurance companies will start putting in anti-short term rental conditions in their policies and that will largely be the end of it. Doesn’t really take much to not insure a property used for commercial use, with a residential insurance plan.

The end result of that would be making it non-profitable to run an air bnb.

And if you need a lesson: Go look at the brutality that happened between Union Busters, and Unions back in the day that lead to actual labour laws. Those people weren’t messing around - they got armed, and they dished out the pain to those they suspected were trying to do the same to the point that it basically brought local economies to a complete halt. The reality is? Properly applied violence tends to get results when nothing else is working.

Like I said: I hope this doesn’t happen, but things are getting pretty bad and heading to worse.

Websites that are funded through ad’s are not going to want you using an ad-blocker. And frankly, if you are not a paying customer, but taking up space - the business typically has right to have you removed. In physical stores it’s obvious but, the online space is not much different.

What I would love to see is some sort of initiative where users can pay like 10-20$ a month, and say 90% of that divided between the websites they view based on engagement metrics on those websites. You could have some modifiers based on the type of website as well - obviously reading news has limited ways of verifying engagement, but we know that there is a high amount of time used per article. Overall this would result in less trackers being needed, websites could feasibly decouple from the ad-driven model entirely, and that might be the best outcome.

With the proposed model - yes, some companies are still going to hard paywall, some might have limited content available to this model and have a 1-5$ a month subscription on top for premium access, and other companies might stay exactly as they are - say like Wikipedia - but be less strained for donations.

This type of arrangement could feasibly end the need for ad’s entirely. Though you could conceivably have an Ad-supported tier as well, whereby if the user is not subscribed to the service they get ads, and if they are they don’t.

The real key to making the proposition as mentioned above work, is to require the payout method to be agreed to be a replacement to seeking ad-revenue for it’s subscribed members. Overall it’s likely (using quick napkin math) that this would provide more revenue per user anyways. It may also devalue web based advertising so hard that it absolutely kills it - and that would mean Content is king. We could end up in a realm where the likes of Youtube don’t block content because some advertiser doesn’t like certain topics. And as more news is consumed online, it may be able to kill the stranglehold the pharma industry has over the news media industry.

Sorry: This is going to be a wall of text. But short answer: Not directly.

Websites, unlike your network administrator of a school, or China, or your ISP can’t actually see the network protocols in use; So no - they don’t KNOW you are using a VPN, they just suspect it with strong evidence. What they CAN do, is blacklist known public VPN server addresses, same way they can block known TOR exit nodes. In any case - a custom landing page can be put up, with some BS like: “In an effort to stop and prevent hacking attempts, we have made the difficult decision to block regular usage of our website and service from known VPN Server addresses. We apologize for the inconvenience.”.

So: What CAN you do if you want to use a VPN? Well: Two basic options - Self host (VPN or SSH Port Forwarding), or Rent a Server and set up a VPN there.

With the first option - Self hosting - the easiest and most straight forward way is using available VPN software. However, you can also use SSH port forwarding to get the same result. In either case - you are simply taking your traffic from your Laptop/mobile device and routing it through your home network. If you are simply concerned about public WiFi and wish to ensure intercept attempts are impractical - this is the way to go. If you want to hide who you are: Well, that won’t do it.

Second Option - Using a Shared/Rented Server provider. Depending on how it is set up, and masked, it will be more difficult - not impossible - to single you out. Ideally you want to go in with a group of people to rent the server space. Just be aware, that some hosts are not going to like grey-area activities on their infrastructure, so make sure you do your research on who the host is - just as you should do if/when selecting a VPN service provider.

In either of these cases, you as the administrator of these services need to understand the risks of opening your network to vectors of attack. Because of the way a VPN is set up, you are functionally punching a whole in your network and stating “Forward Connection Attempts on [selected port] to [System hosting the VPN Service]” - and if the VPN software you are using is flawed - that does open you up to being hacked. This goes the same for hosting using a rented server - shared or dedicated, just the exposure is NOT in your own network.

User generated content has a presumption of consent: It is PRESUMED that the user who is uploading the work work likely created it - and it is reasonable to presume those involved in said work gave consent or otherwise the user had rights to use the content in this way. When you DO NOT have rights to the work, that is when DMCA take downs come into play, and other legal actions - and in that case, you can expect financial penalties, account suspensions/bans, and so on.

There are some serious problems in Canadian law. This situation doesn’t come even close to one of them.

It’s not. The fee was added to encourage people to join in with the Cineclub thing. The back end for seat selection existed before the online reservation fee did as far as I can recall.

1. Why is Justin Trudeau Bad - he will often point out SOMETHING JUSTIN TRUDEAU HAS ACTUALLY DONE THAT IS BAD.
2. He actually has talked about how to get more housing being built. He has actually talked about things to cut - and why to cut them (like the Carbon tax that has had pretty much zero benefit, but has inflated the cost of heating, transportation, and food in this countries at a time we have an affordability crisis).
3. Block Chain being out of control of the Government, means the Government can’t devalue the currency (As in cause inflation) By printing more of it on a whim. There is some (unfortunate) sense to it. I would prefer a constitutional reform that would tie the Canadian Dollar back to Gold as it would again, prevent willy nilly printing of money which… drives inflation. And that would generally mean less bailouts, and more cautious action taking that needs to focus on prevention of crisis instead of printing your way out of a financial crisis.
4. Slowing down immigration is really important. We are adding more people than jobs being added to the economy, and more people than houses can be built. We also have an issue with Doctors. If a person already owns a house here - whatever. But we need to slow down on immigration.
5. No. But you have to make sure your Outfit provides a sense of you being competent.
6. I don’t think he has ever said “fellow poor people” But he has certainly pointed out the policies and situations that have driven more people into poverty.

Instead of Parroting the Media, maybe actually go and listen to his uncut, unclipped answering of the media. Unlike what Trudeau seems to do, Pierre is seemingly actually able to speak a whole sentence without stuttering - almost like he is actually confident in his remark: And that is bloody refreshing.

Oh. PS - I think Pierre has some bad takes, he is a human being after all. But after these years of Trudeau: This country is in Shambles. Car thefts are up, Government Spending is up, Poverty Rates are Climbing. We have had more Scandals in the last 8 years than in the rest of my lifetime - and they all fall on Trudeau’s Shoulders.

Love him or Hate him: Pierre is by current appearances more competent of a Leader than Trudeau, and Competent is what this country needs.

Of course IBM does - who runs them: Engineers? Or Bean Counters?

People have been growing up with a government that lies ever more to them. People have grown up with a government that has purposefully done things that end up being harmful, lied about it, and then the truth comes out - only those same people have been austrasized by being labelled conspiracy nuts - and no one stopped to apologize.

And then the entire situation with Covid and the Covid Vaccine, where yes - depending on health conditions, that damn thing had a serious risk to some people’s health and we were lied to. Some of the issues are related to accidental poor injection which we have had techniques that would have wasted like a tiny % of vaccine doses but avoid all kinds of complications. Then we had people stuck on ventilators for far too long which leads to long term health complication concerns but we were all being told no it’s fine - but then the information comes out.

Flat Earthers, Anti-Vaccers, and so on don’t come out of no where - it comes from a place of strong distrust in authorities that are pushing such information. And especially the Trudeau Government over the last decade has smashed trust in the federal government. And some actions taken by provincial governments have strained trust - with very few Politicians Publicly apologizing for missteps taken during the Pandemic.

TL;DR: Our current Federal Government smashed trust with a lot of people, and that is going to bring into question anything and everything they push - no matter how good or bad. And with the Lack of family doctors in many area’s, few people have trusted sources of good information to turn to, leading to a rise in Anti-vaccination, and other movements.

You know what is amazing: They can index taxes to inflation, but they can’t be damned to index minimum wage to the cost of living increase.

It absolutely does.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3712680/return-to-office-or-quit-ibm-tells-managers.html

IBM has a history of this kind of stuff - when they need to expand: Remote work schemes, and flexible work hours become more common. When they need to tighten the belt, the first step is a RTO. So long as you are willing some flexibility in the time line, and support employees in the move - it will lead to plenty of people quiting, a few people moving, then you do a small round of layoffs avoiding people who willingly moved closer to the office etc as these are people unlikely to have quick new opertunities and are more stuck with the company/loyal to it.

The Pandemic is not the first time IBM has done something like this, and it won’t be the last.

Now, if we really get into the weeds - a lot of Companies that know this can be pulled off REALLY DO NOT want Remote work/hybrid work schedules to become industry norms, as once they do - these practices for ridding your company of say 1-2% of it’s staff periodically stop being viable and you need to go for a more traditional layoff scheme.

Don’t forget HR.

If people aren’t in an office, around other people, their aren’t really a lot of opportunities for random nonsense complaints to come out. And if they do, there are email messages, recorded video calls, and so on that can clarify reality far easier - meaning HR’s job is made clearly irrelevant, and clearly demonstrates it is a mop job for a handful of busy bodies that cost the company more in efficiency, than they earn the company after accounting for their wage.

Which is all well and fine, until you realize the way you learn about new innovations tends to be through advertisement of some sort - word of mouth is a form of advertisement, and, if you can make it work for you: It is by far the most effective.

Thing is: Companies are out to make money, people want to provide affordable access to their product, and when you combine these two desires together - you get advertisements.

The key to making sure it is fine is, regulate and enforce - stop false advertising in it’s tracks. When an advertisement makes a claim: Make them back it up, or face severe economic sanctions such as fines, requirement to spend the same money and time on putting out a recall of the message in the advertisement, and so on. Do that a few times and allow for automatic re-voting on issues where false advertisement was used to oppose a bill and you will quickly see all of that scummy behavior go away.

The problem right now, is companies aren’t really penalized sufficiently for false information spread and other behavior: So, the fine is just a cost of doing business. Just look at cities with “Catch and Release” policies regarding crime - and it is starting to go through the roof. And it’s not the criminals being impacted negatively: It’s the law abiding citizens who are finding their amenities locked up, their grociery stores barring entrance, box stores closing down. This is the same issue so many people have with gun control laws: Law abiding citizens are NOT the ones causing headaches - it’s the people willing to go to a sketchy alley at 2 in the morning willing to pay extra to skip the background check who are absolutely causing problems. It’s the organized crime syndicates that can get their hands on a CNC mill and a machinist who will make the firearms for them - and they will pay.

Unless Law Breakers face real consequences: Nothing changes, and the problem perpetuates or even worse: Gets worse.