genzeddev

As a Canadian taxpayer, my tax dollars fund Samsung.

A Canadian company, AdGear, won[1] a contract with the Government of Canada to be the official advertising technology provider in 2015. That was all fine and good, until Samsung acquired AdGear in 2016 [2].

Now Samsung is distributing official bulletins for the government, as well as running ad auctions on the national news outlet, CBC. These same ad auctions would presumably use all the data harvested from Samsung TVs and other consumer electronic equipment.

I have been unable to find more details on if/when this contract was renewed, I know the original contract was for a term of three years, with two optional one-year renewal periods.

One thing's for sure: The whole thing stinks.

[1] https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/the-government-of-cana...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdGear#History

I think part of the issue is that for someone who's been writing English for 15 years, knocking out 2 paragraphs of cogent explanatory prose is as easy as ABC.

But for someone who is relatively new to the English language, this can be the source of much anguish and frustration. Doubly so for something like a commit message that is immutable by design. The idea of a typo, a bad idiom, or even worse, unintentionally offensive phrasing, being surfaced for all to see 10 years from now can be a frightening prospect.

I think this whole discussion goes to show the nature of institutionalized privilege, and how seemingly innocent requirements can have a disparate impact on marginalized groups.