- I do at least appreciate that emails from one Proton account to another Proton account are secured by default. It has made it much easier for me on the few occasions I've needed to send someone something securely but haven't wanted to walk them through setting up PGP. "Create a free Proton account" is a much easier process.
- The recipient's email service provider seems to be the "third party" at issue here.
- > "These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books," spokesman Drew Herdener told the Guardian. "When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers."
> Amazon refunded the cost of the books, but told affected customers they could no longer read the books and that the titles were "no longer available for purchase".
This has nothing to do with people's having bought a license to the books. It's about Amazon's never having had authorization from the publisher to sell the books. There is no reference at all to people's having licensed the books from Amazon. Amazon referred to people as having bought the books.
- The linked article is about Amazon's having realized they had no right to sell the books they thought they had sold and reversing the transaction, not revoking a license to something they thought they had licensed to you.
You seem to be missing the importance of that nuance.
- Yeah, my reading story is apparently really odd. Didn't realize that until I was much older.
My mom read to me a lot when I was really little, pointing at the words as she read them, and as she tells it, one day when I was 3 I just told her it was my turn and I read books to her. She figured maybe I'd memorized a couple favorites, but on our next trip to the library, she found out some switch had flipped in my head and I was now "a reader."
Neither of my parents had younger siblings or cousins around and I was their first, and apparently they didn't remember their own childhood reading learning very well, so, "Oh, I guess she reads now," was as far as they looked into it until my preschool teachers were very surprised when I started the next year.
I don't really have any explanation for it other than "when I see words, I know what they mean," so unfortunately I don't think it's particularly helpful or generalizable. Just a quirk I guess.
- This was taught by default in my elementary school. I found it frustrating, though, because I don't actually read a word at a time. I've always processed blocks of text, a few lines together. I can read one word at a time if someone needs me to for some reason, but I don't do it by default.
When I was young, I thought it was so strange that they would slow people down like this. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized the way my brain flipped the "on" switch for reading was different from how most people read.
- Plus, even if you wear the watch on one arm and the ring on the opposite hand, they're only ever a maximum of your wingspan apart when in use.
I'd just love the "customizable button on a ring" concept, and that battery could last basically forever.
- I think I'm as interested in it from a pure "button that's always with me" perspective. I already have my original Amazfit Bip watch configured to send a "track back" signal to Snipd via Gadgetbridge to snip podcast notes while I'm driving or washing dishes or whatever. And I've configured a basic Bluetooth remote camera shutter to turn pages forward and backward in KOReader on my Onyx Boox Poke 2 Color so I can read it on a stand while riding a stationary bike under my desk.
In other words, I am apparently exactly the kind of weirdo who would use the heck out of something like this!
- In the vast majority of U.S. markets, it's almost always better to buy--or even rent--the cheapest house that meets your space and safety needs and invest the rest in index funds.
Anyone who ends up with their primary residence as their "biggest investment" has been a piss poor investor.
- I just genuinely thought this had been the case for at least ten years. That's what makes it so surprising.
That they haven't monetized it like this when this is how basically everything is monetized and they spent so long burning money hand over fist just boggles my mind.
- That was my thought too. "Starts"?? I assumed they had been selling aggregated data about user trips the whole time.
- Fixed-rate 30-year mortgages have been around for generations now. They're long since priced into the market.
Whether any specific person actually thinks through whether spending as much money as the bank will lend is prudent, instead of buying a house they can actually afford, saving the money, and upgrading later, is a different question. But it's not fair to blame the mortgage itself.
- I still don't understand how this means you "can't afford to sell your house." It just means you can't afford to buy another house at the same price as the one you have now. That's a different problem, and one that doesn't actually have anything to do with the interest rate on your existing mortgage. You can't afford to buy a house today at the same price that you could on the date you closed on your current house, but that's true regardless of the interest rate on the current house.
Let's put a number on it. Since the article uses $400k as a reference point, let's use that. You could afford to buy a $400k house back when you bought your current house. You cannot afford to buy a $400k house today. That would be true whether or not you had purchased your current house, and regardless of the interest rate on its mortgage if you had.
You only "can't afford to sell your house" if you're underwater on the mortgage and can't come up with the money to sell it.
- I found the vehicleprivacyreport.com site awfully misleading. The "Vehicle Privacy Label" only lists what the manufacturer's current policies are, not what applies to my vehicle. It makes it seem like Toyota is somehow remotely collecting and sharings tons of information about my...2007 Prius. But this car came out in 2006, well before people assumed easy internet connectivity everywhere. Shy of having physical access to my vehicle, they can't read anything, but it's not easy to find that explanation on the site.
- There are already so many ways (and reasons) not to do free or open source software. People who find them convincing are using them. People who don't generally are not.
It seems like the author of the post is just potentially having a change of mind from one side to the other, which barely even seems noteworthy.
- I think I probably would use a project that had a license that said "you can use this for now, but if I later decide I don't want evil people to use it, you'll have to maintain your own fork based on the last version before I made that decision."
Isn't that kind of always the bargain we're making? We can use someone's work as long as they're willing to let us, but if they change the license, we might not be able to continue using it.
- Most people are internally stuck in movie logic. They can't possibly be honest with other people because they can't bring themselves to be honest with themselves.
Who wants to admit their problem with someone is that they see something in that person that they don't like in themselves and it's making them uncomfortable? Heck, if they could clear that up internally, there wouldn't be an external problem to resolve.
I am extremely forthright and literal. I am the one you can count on to come out and just mention the elephant in the room and ask why people are acting weird around it. And I can assure you this does not work. There is an entire game of communication through social nicety that completely falls apart if you ask the question out loud. You either figure out how to play it and read between (all) the lines, or you end up the awkward weirdo because you won't just let people keep their useful fictions about their discomfort with themselves.
And for all of you bristling at this, telling me it can't possibly be like that, that I'm judgmental for calling it exactly as I see it, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
We all do this. We lie to ourselves because living with our self-contradictions is unpleasant. It's much easier to ostracize the person who brings that out into the open than it is to live with our internal inconsistencies.
- Of the six old Android phones I have around, two of them I don't dare turn on due to swollen batteries. I guess it depends how old the devices are whether this was a real risk, but I won't leave devices plugged in anymore for this reason.
Much more useful would have been if you had linked to an archive of the original Kindle Store Terms of Use, which state:
> Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.[0] (emphasis mine)
Notice that "or as authorized by Amazon" is part of the clause with "solely on the device," not a separate clause that somehow might be interpreted to apply to the "right to keep a permanent copy" part.
Does it also say that it is considered licensed to you? Sure. But the "license" is the "right to keep a permanent copy."
It's one thing for Amazon to say, "Shit, we sold you a book we weren't authorized to sell. We have to undo the whole transaction." It's quite another to do what the GGGGGGGP comment (I didn't count the G's) is complaining about and delete your permanent copy of a book for which they did validly sell you a license to keep a permanent copy.
Amazon has meaningfully changed the license agreement now. In 2025, it says:
> Use of Kindle Content. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. Upon your download or access of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you subject to the terms of this Agreement, including without limitation those in “Changes to Service; Amendments” below, a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content (for Subscription Content, only as long as you remain an active member of the underlying membership or subscription program), solely through Kindle Software or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Content Provider may include additional terms for use within its Kindle Content. Those terms will also apply, but this Agreement will govern in the event of a conflict. Some Kindle Content, such as interactive or highly formatted content, may not be available to you on all Kindle Software.[1]
They've eliminated the right to keep a permanent copy that was originally part of the license sold. That change matters. Deleting content sold under that license is a violation of the terms of the agreement on their part.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110109000847/http://www.amazon... [1]https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...