This morning, as I was reading the sports section of the Murky Nooz, I saw a weird little ad on page 4. The ad opened with “What follows is the software documentation required by customers of Voice Signature LLC” and concluded with a list of 256 words, each with an associated hex code.
I looked at their website and found out what they were doing (providing a way for someone to speak a hash fingerprint). But I can’t figure out why they’d pay good money to the Merc to print this list instead of posting it on their webpage, nor why they’d put it in sports rather than, say, business.
I guess I shouldn’t read the paper before I have my coffee.
Maybe it’s some sort of third-party verification that they can use in court proceedings. The Merc can issue an affidavit that the ad consisting of those words/phrases was published on such-and-such a date, while online there isn’t a commonly accepted way of doing such a thing.