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Sources

Canadian Helicopter Jailbirds Back In Custody After James Bond Moment

JOURNAL DE MONTREAL, METRO MONTREAL ( Canada), CTV NEWS, CNN (USA), AP

Worldcrunch

MONTREAL - Two inmates have been recaptured early Monday morning, only one day after their daring escape from a jail northwest of Montreal, in the Canadian Province of Quebec.

Quebec provincial police told the AP they had arrested four people about 30 miles north of the Saint-Jerome jail from which the inmates escaped on Sunday: 36-year-old inmate Benjamin Hudon-Barbeau, arrested Sunday; 33-year-old inmate Danny Provencal, who surrendered peacefully after a brief stand-off with the police; and two other suspects involved in the spectacular getaway.

On Sunday, two men posing as tourists reportedly commandeered a helicopter from a Canadian tour company, ordered the pilot to fly over the Saint-Jerome detention center, hoisted two inmates using cables or ropes into the hovering aircraft – and zipped away, in broad daylight and in full view of incredulous witnesses, CNN reports.

An eyewitness told CTV News that the brazen escape was a real "James Bond moment."

Police quickly managed to locate the helicopter and the pilot about 85 kilometers away in Mont-Tremblant. The Journal de Montréal reveals the pilot was held at gunpoint and forced to execute the A Team-style maneuver.

“As far as I know, it’s a first in Quebec,” Yves Galarneau, the correctional services manager who oversees the Saint-Jerome jail, told Metro Montreal. “It’s exceptional.”

The Saint-Jerome jail has been receiving complaints of overcrowding and reduced staff on weekends.

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Ideas

Look At This Crap! The "Enshittification" Theory Of Why The Internet Is Broken

The term was coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the fatal drift of major Internet platforms: if they were ever useful and user-friendly, they will inevitably end up being odious.

A photo of hands holding onto a smartphone

A person holding their smartphone

Gilles Lambert/ZUMA
Manuel Ligero

-Analysis-

The universe tends toward chaos. Ultimately, everything degenerates. These immutable laws are even more true of the Internet.

In the case of media platforms, everything you once thought was a good service will, sooner or later, disgust you. This trend has been given a name: enshittification. The term was coined by Canadian blogger and journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the inevitable drift of technological giants toward... well.

The explanation is in line with the most basic tenets of Marxism. All digital companies have investors (essentially the bourgeoisie, people who don't perform any work and take the lion's share of the profits), and these investors want to see the percentage of their gains grow year after year. This pushes companies to make decisions that affect the service they provide to their customers. Although they don't do it unwillingly, quite the opposite.

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Annoying customers is just another part of the business plan. Look at Netflix, for example. The streaming giant has long been riddling how to monetize shared Netflix accounts. Option 1: adding a premium option to its regular price. Next, it asked for verification through text messages. After that, it considered raising the total subscription price. It also mulled adding advertising to the mix, and so on. These endless maneuvers irritated its audience, even as the company has been unable to decide which way it wants to go. So, slowly but surely, we see it drifting toward enshittification.

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