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Billboard Advertising Banned Products In Russia Hides If It Recognizes Cops

Posted by samzenpus on from the next-slide dept.

m.alessandrini writes: In response to a ban of food imported from the European Union, an Italian grocery in Russia hired an ad agency to create a billboard with a camera and facial recognition software, that's able to change to a different ad when it recognizes the uniform of Russian cops. Gizmodo reports: "With the aid of a camera and facial recognition software, the technology was slightly tweaked to instead recognize the official symbols and logos on the uniforms worn by Russian police. And as they approached the billboard featuring the advertisement for Don Giulio Salumeria’s imported Italian goods, it would automatically change to an ad for a Matryoshka doll shop instead."

11 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Good heavens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Billboard Advertising Banned Products In Russia Hides If It Recognizes Cops"

    Can anyone translate that indecipherable gibberish into English?

    1. Re:Good heavens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The reason this sentence is bad is because it's a so-called garden path sentence.

      You parsed ‘banned’ as the main verb with subject ‘billboard advertising’ but in fact ‘banned’ is a participle acting as an adjective to ‘products’.

      These sentences are called garden path sentences because they lead you along the ‘garden path’ which seems neat and kept and trimmed on both sides until it turns out to be a dead end and you should have taken a left somewhere.

    2. Re:Good heavens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Parse error: Invalid path, garden not found.

    3. Re:Good heavens by Godwin+O'Hitler · · Score: 4, Informative

      And once you finally do parse it, it still isn't accurate. The billboard doesn't hide itself; it hides its message.

      "Russian Billboard hides banned products advertisement when it recognizes cops." - one word less, unambiguous, and accurate.

      --
      No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
  2. Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Soviet Russia, ad recognize you! Wait.. what?

  3. Don't be so far to believe! by bungo · · Score: 4, Informative

    As pointed out on a news website (which I can't remember where for the moment), the whole thing appears staged, and they 'police' are probably acting (or actors).

    It is not illegal in Russia to sell the western goods, it's just illegal to import them, under the current self-imposed Russian sanctions. There is no reason why the shop can't advertise the food, and there is no law that the police can use to stop the food from being sold.

    --
    "The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
    1. Re:Don't be so far to believe! by bungo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here's a link to a BBC article where some doubts are also expressed on this being real.

      http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-32828359/

      --
      "The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
    2. Re:Don't be so far to believe! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Of course it's not a real thing, it's a stunt. It would never work in any practical sense, and the fact that they have publicised it doesn't exactly help them keep its nature secret from the police. It's just marketing. How much would this much coverage have cost if paid for as TV advertising?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Don't be so far to believe! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      OK. So we all agree it's just a stunt.

      So the real headline should be "Billboard used for advertising".

  4. Re:Huh? You mean there are shops that by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just one shop. It's inside another, slightly larger, shop.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  5. Great - real world adblock by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Funny

    CAn I get a Russian police hat with an "adblock" badge on the front.