In the 41st episode of the Freezenet official podcast, “Taunting the Nuclear Monkey”, we take a look at the news and reviews we covered in March 2022.
Welcome to the public version of the Freezenet official podcast for March 2022. This month’s episode is entitled “Taunting the Nuclear Monkey” after the Russian war criminal, Vladimir Putin. We talk about the implications of the sanctions from a technological standpoint among other things.
This month’s episode also focuses on a Liberal MP’s meltdown after seeing valid criticism hit Bill C-11 hard as well as the ending of the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
This episode also talks about all the usual video game video’s, video game reviews, music reviews, and how autocorrect managed to trigger a police response. All this and more on this month’s podcast!
You can check out our official podcast on Anchor. Alternatively, you can take a listen below:
Edit: This episode is now publicly available on Patreon.
What follows is a transcript of this month’s episode:
Intro
Taunting the Nuclear Monkey
Hi, I’m your host, Drew Wilson. Welcome to episode 41 of the Freezenet official podcast for March, 2022. Here are your top 3 headlines:
The Top 3
As tech companies leave Russia and bans are implemented, fears of thermonuclear war increases
Canadian Liberal MP goes into meltdown as he attacks anyone criticizing Bill C-11
… and the use of the Emergencies Act comes to an end in Canada.
Top Stories
OK, do you think if I stop talking about how ridiculously dramatic the news is, then the temperature will finally start going down? This is, what? The third month in a row that I’m sitting here saying how ridiculous this all is?
Anyway, tensions are rising as fears grow over the possible threat of chemical weapons and even thermonuclear war. This after Russia invaded Ukraine, launching missiles indiscriminately into civilian cities, and killing an untold number of innocent people. The war was unprovoked. Vladimir Putin seemingly hoped that the sight of the Russian military would be enough to get Ukraine to fold within days. That didn’t happen.
What ended up happening was Ukraine bravely standing up to Russian aggression. This as the world lays on more and more sanctions against Russia for invading. Over the course of this month, millions have fled Ukraine while their cities experience constant bombardment. Some cities have almost been completely wiped off the map. One city, reportedly, has 90% of its buildings either damaged or reduced to rubble. It’s a massive humanitarian crisis, the likes of which Europe has not seen since the second world war.
Earlier this month, as the sanctions of western countries hit, so did the headlines. Our first story revolved around payment processors and services. Specifically, Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal all cut off their services to Russian customers. The move was part of a much broader wave of sanctions involving the shutdown of Russian access to the international SWIFT system.
On the surface, this sounds like a mild inconvenience. Looking deeper, however, the moves actually had a pretty big impact on anyone engaged in online e-commerce of any kind within Russia. Many people who buy or sell products or services almost inevitably rely on at least one of those three services. So, a lot of online business operators suddenly found themselves cut off from their payment processes – and money.
Compounding matters is the shut down of Russia’s access to SWIFT. This international payment system helps many money transactions flow over various borders. As a result, even finding lesser known alternatives was proving extremely difficult for Russian citizens. Many alternatives floating around ended up proving to be useless thanks to the country they were operating in. So, suffice to say, that move alone by western countries has had a major impact on Russian’s trying to continue doing business.
Shortly after that story broke, Russia made a move that was pretty surprising to me. Russia blocked Facebook in response. Given how much disinformation that the country pumps into Facebook to undermine democracies all over the world, it was weird seeing that story crop up. Some users report that shortly after the Russian blockade, engagement for American right wing pages on Facebook plummeted. There was no verified account that we saw that confirmed it, but that was the suggestion for the impact that the blockade had.
As the sanctions escalated, numerous corporations began to exodus out of Russia. This includes the likes of Microsoft, Netflix, EA, and Oracle. Apple and Amazon said that they would stop selling their products and services in Russia as well. Google announced that all advertising would halt in Russia. All of this was part of a much larger list of tech companies that refused to do business in Russia. The tech sector, itself, was also only part of a much larger exodus of corporations leaving the country as well.
In response, Russia put forward a law saying that they would nationalize all the properties that are now sitting vacant. Of course, the immediate question revolved around the next steps after. Sure, you get the property of, say, a factory. The question was whether you could so easily just fire up that factory again. You have to deal with intellectual property, supply chains to bring the materials to that factory, sign contracts with suppliers that would maintain the equipment in that factory, deal with the expertise of maintaining that factory, and a whole lot more. The knock-on effect could be whether or not those businesses that left Russia would be motivated to not come back. After all, their factory floor spaces have been effectively seized by the country in the first place. So, there’s plenty of those questioning the wisdom of seizing those properties over the long haul.
After that, we learned that Russian propaganda outlet, RT, started getting banned or otherwise removed from multiple platforms. This over top of how all the major television providers in Canada ceased carrying RT on their television services. While there were attempts to find smaller platforms still willing to carry the service, the impacts were felt pretty quickly. Reports indicate that RT America was forced to lay off staff and shut down operations. This thanks to the TV station being unable to find an international audience after getting deplatformed and taken off the air.
As the sanctions continued to weigh on Russia, one question that might come to mind is what place cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin would be in all of this. As it turns out, the Russian upper class has been trying to evade the sanctions by dumping their money into cryptocurrencies. Crypto firms in the United Arab Emirates were reportedly deluged by requests from Russia. Those requests involved having those digital currencies being liquidated by Russians trying to find safe havens for their money. In one request, someone requested that $6 billion in crypto be liquidated.
Government officials of western countries commented on developments like this, saying that the sanctions do apply to digital assets like cryptocurrencies. They also say that they will be monitoring for violations of those sanctions as well. How successful they will ultimately be remains to be seen. Still, they say they are aware of this.
Some have pointed out in the past that monitoring digital currencies is more difficult, but not impossible. Many experienced in the crypocurrency world admit that something like Bitcoin is no magic bullet to preventing any and every kind of financial blockade. In many cases, it’s more of a theory that financial blockades can be thwarted.
After that, Canadian regulator, the CRTC, announced that they have banned the airing of RT and RT France from the Canadian airwaves. This as western countries grew increasingly worried that Russia might start deploying chemical weapons in Ukraine. What’s more is Putin started suggesting that he and his people would start engaging in “cleansing” of people who don’t completely support the Putin invasion. He called those who do not support his war “traitors” and “scum”.
Also of note is Russia’s famous “fake news” law. The law would ban people from calling Putin’s war on Ukraine a “war”. It also bans people from calling his invasion an “invasion”. Instead, he demanded that it be called a military exercise. Failure to comply could mean up to 15 years in prison. As a result of the “fake news” law, media outlets began pulling their journalists from the country out of safety concerns. Because of this, it became harder to get a real sense of what is going on on the ground in Russia outside of video’s showing mass demonstrations against the war posted onto social media.
The credibility of Bill C-11 is continuing to go completely off the rails. As you know, Bill C-11 is Canada’s social media censorship bill. It has been widely condemned by creators, digital rights advocates, and experts alike. The only real reason it continues seems to be thanks to lobbying by legacy corporations and old traditional broadcasters. Those are the people who stand to gain from this bill at the expense of pretty much everyone else.
If supporters were hoping that this month would be more friendly to the legislation, they were wrong. This month has proven to be even more disastrous to the credibility of Bill C-11.
Things kicked off this month with a seemingly innocuous question: how will digital first creators benefit from this legislation? That question was brought forward by NDP MP, Matthew Green. By now, this should be an easy question to answer. After all, so much of the selling of this legislation has to do with allowing Canadians to be compensated for their work much more than they are now.
Liberal MP, Mark Gerretsen, responded with the following comments: “the member raises an excellent point. I will be the first to say I do not have an answer to that. I certainly hope that the committee will look into this issue at that stage.”
The response is, of course, a complete disaster. It’s not a disaster for the Liberal MP in question, but more about the whole process and the state of Bill C-11. This sort of thing should have been figured out when it was being drafted when it was still known as Bill C-10. What’s more is that it showcases just how heavily ignored Canadian creators were throughout this process.
Some Canadian creators expressed a lack of surprise because it basically confirmed what they knew all along: Bill C-11 is a bill that doesn’t take them into account in the first place. All it really considers is whether or not the likes of Bell Media and other legacy corporations were happy. As for the rest, well, you’re on your own.
From there, the CRTC pulled a, well, CRTC. Scott Hutton of the CRTC commented that the regulator is demanding more power to take a more interventionist approach to regulating content on the Internet. Hutton said, “With respect to the role of the ISPs themselves, yes we have considerable authority on many different fronts, but the Telecom Act and how we have to implement it and it is certainly not clear – and I’m being quite honest when I say not clear – that we can deal with content under that Act. Where we deal with content is under the Broadcasting Act and hopefully that can be modernized to take a more interventionist approach in this area.”
So, a surprisingly honest remark where the regulator is basically openly and directly demanding more power to regulate the Internet and the content that is on it.
Debate over the legislation, naturally heated up. So, we took the opportunity to discuss, again, what such a piece of legislation means for Canadian creators. First, the legislation inherently puts the Canadian government in a position to deem whether or not content you see on platforms is “Canadian”. What’s more, a large portion of speech that is protected by the Canadian Charter would get relegated to a “program” which the Canadian government is setting out to regulate in the first place.
From there, the legislation sets out to order the different platforms to promote content that is deemed “Canadian content” by the government. This is through the recommendations. While the legislation doesn’t explicitly order a website to implement a specific algorithm, it does dictate what the end results should be.
So, for instance, if there is a list of recommended content somewhere on the page, there is only a limited number of, say, video’s, that can be recommended at any given time. Let’s say the number of videos the site recommends is 10. That is 10 chances that Canadian’s can have their content promoted through that recommendation feature. If the government decides that 4 of those recommendations should be what they consider “Canadian”, that means there is now only 6 spaces left for everyone else to be selected in the recommendations section. This, of course, includes Canadian content creators.
Another big problem with the legislation is that it sets the bar quite high for what can be considered “Canadian content”. Some of the provisions include having that content be translated into French, English, and a variety of indigenous languages. There are also provisions that says that the CRTC can further clamp down on what can be considered Canadian and what won’t. The obvious result is that Canadian’s who produce content will not make the cut.
So, Canadian producers will now have to fight for an increasingly diminished pool of recommended content positions. This means that more of them will not make the cut and see their viewership tank as a result. Less recommendations means fewer possibilities that their content will get viewed. With fewer views, that means fewer opportunities to earn a living online. As a result of this and many other reasons we brought up in our article, that means many careers risk dying before they even start.
The next question then becomes, “how can you get your content qualified as Canadian?” So, we actually looked into this aspect. The CRTC has set out their own rules about what can be considered Canadian and what can’t. According to their official website, they have a points system in place. In order to qualify, you need to earn 6 points or more to be considered “Canadian”. As experts rightfully point out, what counts invariably is a poor proxy to what is considered “Canadian” and what is not. The ways to earn points is as follows:
“- Director (2 pts.)
– Screenwriter (2 pts.)
– First and Second Lead Performers (performer or voice) (1 pt. each)
– Production Designer (1 pt.)
– Director of Photography (1 pt.)
– Music Composer (1 pt.)
– Picture Editor (1 pt.)”
So, we ran our own test. We here at Freezenet, as you know, produce content that is classified as “Digital First” content. In fact, we basically have two different productions: this audio podcast and a video YouTube channel with video content. You’d think that since these operations are manned by a 100% Canadian crew each, that we would obviously fall under the category of “Canadian content” just based off of the CRTC rules.
After running both our vidcast and podcast through the rules, warping and bending every single rule imaginable just to qualify, we concluded that neither our podcast nor our video podcast qualifies as “Canadian content”. We were, at best, 1 point short of the required minimum even with the most liberal interpretation of the rules that probably wouldn’t even come close to passing muster.
What’s more is that, chances are, many online creators – especially smaller time ones – will end up falling into the same category of “content that is deemed not ‘Canadian’ enough”. As far as we can tell, the CRTC could actually change and update these rules, but mysteriously, that hasn’t happened. So, little wonder why so many creators in Canada are freaking out about this.
Shortly after, we became aware of an interview by the Canadian Broadcasters Association president. The topic, of course, was Bill C-11. In the interview, the CBA president tried to dismiss the criticisms of Bill C-11. Primarily, he just flatly said that the concerns are overblown.
He went on to make multiple inaccurate statements such as how the bill only focuses on the large platforms and not on small creators (which is wrong because it absolutely does affect content creators). Another inaccurate statement he made was that there are concerns about how viewership on large streaming platforms (like Netflix) would disappear because of Bill C-11. He proceeded to say how that basically won’t happen. We’re not aware of that criticism anywhere in the debates. So, we concluded that this was just a straw-man argument.
The CBA president also said that the legislation doesn’t regulate content. We responded by quoting the text of the bill which says, in part, “this Act applies in respect of a program that is uploaded […] is uploaded to the social media service by the provider of the service or the provider’s affiliate, or by the agent or mandatary of either of them; or[…] is prescribed by regulations made under section 4.2.”
For clarity, Section 4.2 says, in part, “the Commission may make regulations prescribing programs in respect of which this Act applies.”
“the Commission” is referring to the CRTC.
Basically, the text of the bill disagreed with that assessment.
So, we heard from a major supporter of the legislation and can only conclude that the criticisms still stand and remain unaddressed.
It was at that point that tensions boiled over for Liberals. Apparently, after a committee meeting, one Liberal took his anger out on creators over Twitter.
Darcy Michael commented on Twitter, “I hate that this bill c11 stuff is having me – a lifelong @NDP’r – siding with the Cons but this bill has some flaws that directly impact me. Too bad liberal mp @Chris_Bittle wanted his Mattlock moment with me instead of actually hearing my concerns.”
Chris Bittle openly attacked the creator by saying, “Happy to listen to your concerns but you didn’t answer my questions and just parroted misinformation about C-11 during a study about another piece of legislation.”
Michael Geist chimed in on the exchange, “Yikes. Now Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage says @theDarcyMichael “parroting misinformation” about Bill C-11.
FWIW, absolutely correct to cite 1 UGC regulation […] 2 harms from discoverability rules”
Open Media responded, “It’s on @Chris_Bittle and @CdnHeritage’s to demonstrate that Bill C-11 clearly *excludes* @theDarcyMichael’s content.
Right now under C-11 the CRTC has power over all audiovisual Internet content, with ill-defined exceptions.
Powers must be limited for C-11 to move forward.”
It was definitely quite shocking to see that Liberals went from outright ignoring Canadian creators to outright attacking Canadian creators.
It was at that point that there was the big political shakeup. The NDP and the Liberal parties announced a supply and confidence deal. Essentially, the NDP supports the Liberal party on confidence votes in exchange for the NDP getting things like pharmacare and dental care through. There was, unfortunately, no mention of digital rights issues of any kind, though.
We pointed out how Bill C-11 never had a chance to make it into such a deal. The NDP did flip-flop on this and now oppose the legislation. Of course, the Bloc have already said that they fully support the bill, so the Liberals had no incentive to back down on such a bill.
Still, there is a very valid point that the lack of affordable and accessible high speed Internet represents a missed opportunity. Both parties, to varying degrees, support lowering cell phone rates and increasing access to high speed Internet in rural and indigenous communities. So, the fact that this didn’t make it into the agreement was, indeed, disappointing.
It was at that point that the Liberal MP in question went into full meltdown. Bittle lashed out at university law professor, Michael Geist, over the legislation. Bittle rage tweeted, “No one was targeted, professor. It’s disappointing that you have to engage in hyperbole to argue your point.
Seems the all the opponents of the legislation have left is conjecture, hyperbole and misinformation. Disappointing for you, sir.”
Geist calmly responded, “The concerns I’ve identified with Bill C-11 are neither hyperbole nor misinformation. You asked which provisions open door to user generated content regulation. That would be Sections 4.1(2) and 4.2.”
Geist added, “Further, the concerns of the digital-first creators on the impact of the discoverability rules are absolutely valid. First, not at all clear how they’ll benefit in Canada since there is no system for user-generated Cancon.”
At some point, Bittle then posted a massive tweet storm, repeating many of the same debunked claims about what C-11 does and doesn’t do. He even added some new bizarre claims such as how Bill C-11 somehow supports a safe work environment from things like harassment, and a right to access content and audience data.
Uh…
1) C-11 doesn’t address workplace harassment as far as we know.
2) Creators do, in fact, have access to their audience data already. Why that is even a concern and how that is a right is a mystery to me.
Still, this is definitely another sign of the Liberals losing the argument. They are simply insulting their critics, not properly backing up their claims, seemingly inventing new ones, and not addressing the actual criticisms of the legislation. It was a meltdown of epic proportions on that Liberal MP’s part. I guess that’s one way to nuke your own credibility from orbit.
It seems that the story of the so-called “Freedom convoy” is coming to a close. Towards the end of last month, convoy organizer, Tamara Lich, was denied bail. The judge was unconvinced that Lich would go home as she promised and cease her counselling to commit mischief.
As that happened, Canadian regulators were contacting various Bitcoin companies. This to remind them that they must abide by the requirements of the freezing of funds. Some operators expressed defiance to the court order, however, and promoted self-custodial wallets to evade the court ruling.
It is noted that Lich has since appealed and managed to get bail. She has appealed that ruling to try and lift some of the bail requirements as well. Lich also now faces a raft of charges in relation to her activities.
As the convoy was cleared, Trudeau then lifted the Emergencies Act order. This after the streets were cleared and vehicles were towed. Trudeau commented that the emergency has ended. He also commented that existing laws are now sufficient to keep people safe.
Later on, Pat King had his bail hearing. Some wondered if the initial Lich ruling would be a sign of what was to come for King’s hearing. Whether or not it had any impact might still be up for debate, but King was ultimately denied bail. In the weeks since, King has had a raft of charges laid against him. Some of the charges include intimidation and obstructing police, counselling to commit intimidation, counselling to commit mischief, counselling to obstruct police, and disobeying a court order.
From there, the convoy story faded away from the headlines altogether.
In a way, it’s surprising that the top three headlines didn’t just soak up all the attention this month, but believe it or not, there were other stories that did make headlines this month.
Other Stories Making News
Canadian Heritage Minister, Pablo Rodriguez, was touting another prong on the Liberal’s war on the open Internet. This prong is, of course, link taxes. The minister was asked where some of the funds will go with respect to news. The Minister responded, “It will be the same. Because news are news, […] If you get it printed, or if you get it on radio or if you get it on television, they all contribute to informing Canadians, so we will make sure they’re all included.”
So, basically, this is direct confirmation that the link tax is only intended to support the large legacy players in the business.
Shortly after those comments, the Minister also said that the link tax will be tabled “soon“, though we note we haven’t heard anything about the legislation since this month.
Opposition continued to grow against Rogers attempt to acquire Shaw. OpenMedia went before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to specifically oppose the deal. The digital rights organization pointed out that the deal risked job losses, less competition, and higher prices.
Catherine Edwards of the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) warned of similar potential consequences of such a merger. She worries that the cuts she’s seen in the past, thanks to similar mergers, will only continue with this particular merger. Part of the fear is that the large new mega corporation would be more concerned with blockbuster US deals over smaller local news outlets. As you can imagine, the fears then lead to a potential flood of layoffs for smaller local media stations.
As that happened, Industry Minister, François-Philippe Champagne, said that he won’t necessarily approve of the Rogers Shaw merger without strings attached. Instead, he seems to be taking the approach that certain assets would have to be spun off first.
Meanwhile in the UK, justice and freedom of the press took another huge blow this month. Wikileaks co-founder, Julian Assange, had his request to appeal his extradition ruling to the UK Supreme Court denied. Observers are suggesting that this means that the Australian resident is now one step closer to being extradited to the US. There are fears that extradition to the US is basically a death sentence for the journalist.
Finally, there was a rather unexpected footnote to a story we brought you back in 2017 and 2018. At the time, a coalition known as FairPlay Canada was actively promoting a mass Internet censorship scheme in Canada. Thankfully, that ended with the CRTC rejecting the idea altogether.
Part way through that debate, we published a response to comments made by then president of Unifor, Jerry Dias. We offered counterpoints to the censorship proposal and comments made by Dias based on our years of experience and knowledge of how modern technology works. In response, Dias sent in the lawyers and threatened to sue me for defamation. Sadly, with the unexpected lack of legal backing and the legal state of free speech at the time, we were forced to take down the article. This overruled the contents of the article in question, so what was said didn’t really matter. It marked the only time we were forced to take down an article to date. Still, we thought the story was over with the CRTC ruling.
Well, we got an unexpected update on things. Apparently, Dias left as the president of Unifor at some point. We don’t really know when. Reports surfaced about a recent Unifor press conference. In that conference, Unifor alleged that Dias received $50,000 from a Personal Protective Equipment manufacturer. He allegedly subsequently promoted the rapid test kits made by that manufacturer to union members after. Unifor says that they have, in response, charged Dias with violating Unifor’s code of ethics and democratic practices. A hearing for which Dias can respond to the allegations is forthcoming. No firm date was set by the time the conference happened.
Dias reportedly issued a statement just prior to the press conference. In it, he says that he was using painkillers, sleeping pills, and alcohol. This thanks to “a debilitating sciatic nerve issue”. He commented that the drugs and alcohol affected his judgment. He says that he has since entered into a rehabilitation program.
Our response to this completely unexpected and out of the blue story was basically, “Wow, that happened.”
Video Game Reviews
So, on that note, let’s turn towards entertainment.
Before we get into the video game reviews, I wanted to point out the first impression video’s we’ve posted this month.
The first Steam game we checked out this month is Dungeon Siege II. You can check out that video directly on our site or YouTube.
After that, we checked out the Playstation 3 game, MotorStorm: Apocalypse. That video can be watched directly on our site or on Youtube.
This month’s XBox360 game was Gears of War 2. That video can be watched directly on our site or YouTube channel.
Finally, we wrapped things up with a second Steam game. The game we featured was FlatOut 2. That video can be seen directly on our site or YouTube channel.
As always, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and turn on notifications to get realtime updates on what video’s we’ve posted.
Now, here are video games we’ve reviewed this month:
First up is Tetris for the Sega Genesis. While the graphics were decent, there were some rather bizarre programming choices. This game wound up with an underwhelming 58%.
Next up is Pac-Attack for the Sega Genesis. A game that starts off with a novelty factor, but repetitive plays means that novelty wears off after a while. This game gets a bland 56%.
From there, we tried Columns for the Sega Genesis. Definitely one of the better puzzle games I’ve played on that console, though the lack of a pause menu did hold this game back. This one still got a decent 70%.
Finally, we tried Columns III: Revenge of the Columns. A game that takes the columns concept and makes it into a head to head game. We commented that if this was combined with the single player modes from the last game, it would have been a great game. As it stood in its current form, it only gets an OK 66%.
Music Reviews
As for music we’ve listened to this month, we’ve got…
Jones & Stephenson – The Third Rebirth (Original Mix)
General Base – Rhythm And Drums (Part 2)
2 Brothers On The 4th Floor Feat. Des’Ray And D-Rock – Come Take My Hand (Extended Version)
Robert Miles – Children (Dream Vrs.)
Culture Beat – Inside Out (Mikado Mix)
The Rembrandts – I’ll Be There For You
Hootie & the Blowfish – Only Wanna Be With You
Van Halen – Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)
… and finally, U2 – Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
Picks of the Month
So, that leads us to our pick of the month. This month, our pick of the month belongs to Robert Miles – Children (Dream Vrs.).
Oddities
When you get on board of a plane, there’s plenty of things you don’t want to see or hear before or during the flight. This might include an engine catching fire or a window popping out mid flight. Those are pretty obvious examples. Another thing you probably don’t want to find out just before departure? Just ask the passengers of a certain JetBlue flight in New York. Their pilot was escorted back off the plane and taken into custody because he was too drunk to fly. He reportedly blew a .17 which is over the legal limit of .04. Yeah, one of the last things I want to hear on the comm system before takeoff is the pilot saying “(heavy sigh) this iz yur cabtan speaging.”
A would-be carjacking was thwarted in Newburgh this month. A man allegedly stole a car drivers phone, pushed the victim to the ground, and attempted to steal his vehicle. Unfortunately for the car-jacker, he ran into the most effective anti-car theft technology known to man: manual transmission. The carjacker was unable to get the vehicle into gear and attempted to escape on foot. Police later arrested him and charged him with two felony counts of robbery. Who knew a vehicle that old would be so secure after all?
Autocorrect can make life a whole lot easier. Small typos disappear and it can allow you to more easily send messages to others. As many users can attest to, however, autocorrect is far from perfect. Sometimes, it picks words that makes a sentence seem really strange. While it may make for some unexpected humour and embarrassment, it doesn’t typically make the news in any particularly big way. That is until this month, however.
In Pittsburgh, a man sent a text message to his friend. The message contained a word that autocorrect changed. This friend was alarmed by the contents of that message and replied asking if he was in any danger. When his friend didn’t respond, the friend contacted police thinking there was an active shooter on the premise. Police showed up, whole buildings were evacuated, but no active shooter was found. As it turned out, the text message meant to use the phrase “fire alarm”. Autocorrect changed that phrase to “fire arm”. It was concluded that this was all just a big misunderstanding, though I’m sure at least one of them involved felt a bit embarrassed about what happened. “Alright, wheres the mass shooter???” “Whoops. Darn autocorrect. Better resend that…” (tick tick tick tick tick).
Outro
Before we close out this month’s episode, we got two quick announcements to make.
First, we reached a new milestone for this podcast. According to our Anchor statistics, we have officially reached over 500 listens! That is awesome! I wanted to take the moment to thank every one of you for making this milestone happen. It couldn’t have happened with out you, the listener. On behalf of myself and Nolan, thank you so much. Here’s to the next 500 listens!
Second is the February Wiki content patch. This month, we managed to get a few more episodes completed. We have now reached all the way up to episode 440 for the back episodes of the Future Sound of Egypt. With that patch, we are very nearly there to the next mega episode: 450. So, progress continues to be made. We’ve also updated the archives to have the latest episodes for the Future Sound of Egypt, Fables, Resonation, and the V Recordings Podcast. No new episode for the Random Movement Podcast this month, so that archive remains up to date as-is.
If you’d like to get your hands on some behind the scenes stuff, exclusive content, and early access material, you can check out our Patreon page at Patreon.com/freezenet. Through this, you can help make Freezenet just that much better all the while getting some pretty cool stuff in the process. That’s Patreon.com/freezenet!
Alternatively, you can simply buy us a coffee via ko-fi.com/freezenet!
…and that’s this months episode for March, 2022. I’m Drew Wilson for Freezenet. Be sure to check out our website at freezenet.ca for all the latest in news and reviews. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Thank you for listening and see you next month.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
