Putting a face to a name

A personal preference is to GO to the township office, not email them.

For some, the new year means resolutions, diets, workouts or turning over a new leaf. For me, perhaps because I’m a details person, January means ensuring that household services continue to arrive and that I’m living up to annual commitments. Among them, as usual, I stopped by the Township office to pay the annual licence fee for our dog, Jazz. The clerk said the past few years Uxbridge has contracted that service out to Docupet, an online service in Kingston.

“That’s fine,” I said, “but I’d prefer to pay you.”

“It’s easier if you go online,” she said.

“Maybe, but if I pay you locally, in a way I’m ensuring you keep your job.” (more…)

Fighting fakery

Sports Illustrated website offering profile of reporter Drew Ortiz.

Have you ever read a story in a magazine and wondered who the reporter was who wrote it? Well, I have, often. More specifically, imagine that you were reading an edition of Sports Illustrated a few weeks back. You saw a story that caught your attention written by Drew Ortiz. If you then searched the Sports Illustrated website to find out more about Ortiz, here’s the message you’d have found:

“Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn’t out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents’ farm,” the SI site said.

Well, the mystery around Drew Ortiz and his SI story intrigued reporters at a New York-based science and technology publication called Futurism. They did some checking and discovered that the photo of Drew Ortiz could be traced to an Artificial Intelligence image website with the description: “neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes.” (more…)