A warrant canary is a method by which a communications service provider aims to implicitly inform its users that the provider has been served with a government subpoena despite legal prohibitions on revealing the existence of the subpoena

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

  • fizzle@quokk.au
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    8 days ago

    IDK if its true but I heard of cartographers doing something similar. Include some fictitious minor feature somewhere so you can demonstrate that someone has copied your map.

    • CerebralHawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      7 days ago

      Paper towns. As in, towns that only exist on paper. There’s also a movie with that name, Paper Towns, though I can’t recall if it’s related to the concept. IIRC, it mentions the term at least. It’s absolutely true. Back when paper maps were a thing, they would put some random town in, and look for it in competitors’ maps.

      Now that we have satnav, things like Google/Apple Maps and various others, I think they’re mostly a thing of the past.