E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/business/media/the-plot-twist-e-book-sales-slip-and-print-is-far-from-dead.html? <comment><USER2> I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on about exploring book stores or the smell of new paper. I love my Kindle and I really hope to be able to use it as my primary reading source, its just so convenient, light, portable and unobtrusive (especially with that newer back- light option).

But the price of new ebooks turns me off for sure, I wouldn't buy a new novel for $20+, in ebook, hardcover, paperback or ever really. $10 is the sweet spot for novels and I think Amazon was driving that well for awhile. I'll stick to older novels that are < $10.

Let me also state that paper really does have its merits, at least for now until some smart tablet engineers can solve some problems with the format. I love a comic book as paperback, but that is because I don't think tablets or even color e-ink has quite gotten there yet. I also think technical reference books (like programming guides) are best served in paper. Again, I don't think its easy to flip through pages on a tablet or kindle, but maybe that will be solved some day too.

<comment><USER3> I hold fairly different opinions, though I agree that digital reading sources can make sense for completely new books read for pleasure.

As a longtime physical product, paper has a lot of benefits. My dad can give me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $3, and then I own it forever. Additionally, once I own it I can share it, give it away, write in the margins, dog-ear pages, leave post-it notes, etc. I also can't imagine a world where 20 years later I can trivially give my old Kindle eBooks to my children.

On the other hand, I much prefer having searchable digital technical reference books. I find the flipping and index/table-of-contents referencing to be very "immersion-breaking" when I'm programming. For example, it's much quicker and easier to Ctrl+F for "XCHG" than it is to dig through the intimidating multi- thousand page Intel x86 Instruction Reference. When I was taking an OS course, I had to do this all the time, and I much preferred the pdf reference over the physical one.

<comment><USER4> Additionally, human beings depend strongly upon spatial orientation. Printed materials dovetail with this. Many recount being able to recall information in part based upon its location within a printed text. IIRC, there was... I think it was a lengthy New Yorker piece, a number of years ago, that went into this. Including the "messy" professor's/researcher's office, until one has a conversation there with them and observes them quickly referencing all sorts of material based upon where they place it -- throughout the office and within specific piles.

I wonder whether VR technology will enable us to better engage this in the digital landscape.

<comment><USER5> For many words, I actually remember the location on the page, and the page's location in the book, and the book, where I first learned it! [I usually don't remember the exact page number, but some sort of general sense of the position in the book.]

With a kindle book, I've found this effect to be much weaker, and for unpaged ebooks (e.g. many free books in html form), it's almost non-existant.

It's important to me, at least, because this effect is one way I manage to recall the meaning of words I only half-remember. Maybe it sounds weird, but I think of the general concept I'm trying to remember, then the image of the page floats into view, and ... ok maybe it is weird. ><

<comment><USER6> I do the exact same thing. Glad I'm not the only one with a strongly visual memory that works that way.

Incidentally, this may be one advantage of PDFs over other formats. Responsiveness be damned, deterministic paging is also an important book property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Small publisher here. I believe Ebook sales have been generally flat or declining for many titles for the following reasons:

* Pricing issues

* Huge influx of new/republished titles entering ebook distribution channels are outpacing demand, including many free or low-cost self-published titles

* Kindle Fire sales negatively impacting ebook reading habits encourages people to do other things besides read (video, apps, games, etc.)

* Decline of marketplaces/platforms that are unable to compete, e.g. Nook, Sony.

* Subscription plans (especially Kindle Unlimited) eating away at paid digital downloads.

* Some people prefer print

Many established publishers are still focused on print because that's where the sales are and that's where they still wield considerable power. For the short technology guides I publish, print accounts for 70-80% of sales. Certain ebook marketplaces that _could_ be doing well (Apple iBookstore, Google Play) have really stagnated, unfortunately.

<comment><USER8> As an ebook consumer, the single biggest reason I don't buy more ebooks is because I have to spend time and energy figuring out if the ebook has DRM or if I can remove the DRM afterwards.

Also, I spend time thinking about the fact that if I ever move to Kindle, any epubs I have won't work regardless of DRM.

I can't speak for other readers, but this is why I don't buy or read books as much as I used to. And I used to read a lot of books.

<comment><USER9> > if I ever move to Kindle, any epubs I have won't work regardless of DRM.

I've frequently used Calibre ([http://calibre-ebook.com](http://calibre- ebook.com)) to convert epub to mobi. There are also plugins available for it that strip DRM, though I can't vouch for them.

<comment><USER10> Amazon also supplies KindleGen([http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211](http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211)) to convert epub to mobi

<comment><USER9> Neat, but weird that they don't offer it as a service through their site... or do they?

<comment><USER11> You can email documents to a specific email address tied to your kindle account and they will be converted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Buried paragraph at the end of the article that discounts the entire piece (as a piece about _readers_ rather than as a piece about _publishers_ ):

"It is also possible that a growing number of people are still buying and reading e-books, just not from traditional publishers. The declining e-book sales reported by publishers do not account for the millions of readers who have migrated to cheap and plentiful self-published e-books, which often cost less than a dollar."

<comment><USER13> Indeed; in other recent (last month or so) reports that others have mentioned in blog postings, indie e-book sales are skyrocketing. Anecdotally, a number of indie authors are reporting healthy and increasing sales.

And of course after the big five (and I suppose others) renegotiated their contracts with Amazon to agency pricing, to raise e-book prices above $10, often more than paperbacks and sometimes more than hardbacks (see other comments in this topic to that effect), their e-book sales, unit and revenue, took a substantial hit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been really disappointed with the pricing of eBooks.

A new book is available for pre-order, and here is the Amazon pricing:

Kindle – $26.35 Hardcover – $19.23 Audible – $27.61 Audio CD – $30.00

All logic suggests the electronic version should be cheaper. Prices like this will likely drive me, and others, to piracy.

Yes, the value of the book is what I am willing to pay for it, but I feel insulted by the pricing structure offered time and again.

<comment><USER15> Turns out Amazon knew what they were doing when they were selling ebooks for cheaper. The publishers come in with agency pricing and boom, sales plummet.

<comment><USER16> This is what is really frustrating about the article. It spends the entire first half boosting print books like there is something magical about them that prevents them from being disrupted like movies and TV were.

>E-books' declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology better than other forms of media, like music and television.

And only until near the end of the article does it reveal the actual reason why print is far from dead.

>Higher e-book prices may also be driving readers back to paper.

The publishers put print books on life support by artificially inflating the prices of e-books. They are just delaying the inevitable in my opinion.

<comment><USER17> There is in fact something magical about printed books :-) Well, not magic, but books are not just the medium of data transfer, they are also integral part of the reading experience. This is unlike music, where it doesn't matter if you're playing the content from a CD or transferring it over the network. The feeling of reading a book will always be different from using a reading device, it doesn't matter how to great the device is. Once the novelty of e-readers wears off, you will start to see a steady-state of sales on paper and other media for books. It seems that it is already happening. I, for example, read books in printed as well as electronic forms. I use e-readers for the convenience, but there are some types of books that don't work in electronic format in my personal opinion - and I think there are lots of people like me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To me, this is the best news I've heard all day.

See, used books made me - my local library as a kid was heavy on Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, and decades-old travel guides, not so much on other subjects. I very distinctly remember wanting to find Catch-22 and not only was it not available from my local, it wasn't available at any library in the county.

But used book stores didn't have that problem. I found my copy of Catch-22 in the back of a Goodwill store. Tolkien came out of a Salvation Army. Scores more came from library sales and yard sales, each a quarter or a dollar at a time.

<comment><USER2> Much of these books you can borrow for free on your kindle from a library though.

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately you still have to physically go to the library to get them sent to your kindle. It's almost worth $5-10 to me to not have to do that.

Edit: I think I need to have a chat with my library.

<comment><USER20> No you don't, at least not universally. I get mine sent to me, I think most libraries use the same system (Overdrive).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One word: price. E-book prices have soared! Almost everything on Amazon is over $10 these days.

They're often going for more than the paperback price, and certainly more than the prices you'd find at a discount bookseller.

<comment><USER22> I imagine the ebook is the one both providing greater value, and having a harder time competing for production resources -- while paper may be overcapacity now.

<comment><USER23> Clearly the ebook is not providing greater value if demand is slack compared to paper books..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> More bad information about the publishing business from the NY Times. Ebook sales aren't declining generally; it's big publisher ebook sales that are declining. Ebook sales for self-pubbed authors and indie publishers are growing rapidly. If you have any doubts about this, check out the authorearnings.com website, which tracks sales of ebooks on Amazon and other platforms.

Buried in the article is information from Amazon that ebook sales are continuing to rise. But this article isn't about ebook sales -- it's about big publisher ebook sales.

The article also says that dedicated ebook reader sales have declined. This is true but not because of a shift away from ebooks. It's that ebook reading is shifting to tablets and phones, a trend that is widely recognized in the industry, but not in this article.

The reason that big publishers (and some smaller publishers following the traditional model) are losing ebook sales is that, in the big Hachette - Amazon dustup last year, the big publishers won the ability to keep ebook prices ridiculously high and to prevent discounting by Amazon. So big publishers routinely price ebooks about the same or higher than paperbacks. Of course their ebook sales are suffering! But self-pubbed and indie publisher books are priced much lower than print books, and are of course gaining market share very quickly.

The NY Times reports on publishing are all biased toward big traditional publishers - after all, that's essentially what the Times is. (To the Times' credit, they have a public editor who critiques their stories, and the public editor has said that the last two major stories in the Times about Amazon failed to meet journalistic standards.) They ignore information like what's on authorearnings.com because they're trying to get people to believe there's a trend away from ebooks. There certainly are some people who decide what kind of book to buy according to what they think the latest trend is. But if you're looking for accurate information about the book business, don't expect it from the Times.

<comment><USER19> This is a misconception - it's like saying Hollywood is worried about Youtube celebs.

There was an episode on "What's the point" (a 538 podcast) where book publishers talked about how they use data in their industry. Publishers are primarily interested in cultivating "star" authors and use social media + a number of other signals to find them.

They were asked about it and basically said that the hostility between publishers and self-published authors is only perceived, and in reality the self-publishing makes it easier to find the star authors and pick them up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is this surprising when you are charged similarly for print and digital copies despite the production costs being nowhere near the same? Ebooks were supposed to be the cost effective, cut out the middlemen, pay the author directly format.

What wasn't accounted for was that the book indexers have no incentive to pass on their savings to the consumer.

edit: Let's not forget the artificial restrictions imposed by DRM, either. How difficult is it to share a digital book vs physical?

<comment><USER26> The production costs are probably not as different as you think. The variable cost of a hardcover book is in the neighborhood of a few dollars though the exact figure depends on the size of the print run and some of the costs are buried in the cut a distributor usually takes. (As a benchmark, an author- ordered PoD copy of my ~250 page trade paperback from Createspace costs $3.75 before shipping.)

So e-books should be cheaper than physical books, all other things being equal, but the cost difference isn't as much as many assume.

<comment><USER27> Publishers aren't that forthcoming on costs, but for large-print-run, mass- market paperbacks, numbers I've heard thrown about are a cost of less than $0.50/book. So I wouldn't expect much savings from going digital. Similar situation to software: the move from boxed software to digitally delivered software didn't make it any cheaper, because the cost of the box and CD-ROM was not really a significant part of the price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sometime I wonder what the markering sales tag lines would be if the book was released after the e-book.

Zero battery usage. Spill friendly throw it away. Environmentally friendly fully recycable without ewaste. High contrast

If the price is similar, why go ebook unless you need it delivered right now? Ebook has an advantage of of library in your pocket, zero delivery time.

<comment><USER29> That's outweighed by the fact that I don't own the ebook in the same way I own the book. The book is mine to keep, loan, rent, throw away, donate, etc, in a way that's not governed by esoteric license agreements.

I can wait 2 days for that. If you can't wait, consider that if you buy a print book from Amazon that has an ebook available, Amazon will let you read the beginning of the book on your kindle app/device, until the paper book ships in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Physical books still trump e-books for me, though I use both.

There is something nicer about a physical book which my e-reader is not able to replicate or replace.

</comment><comment><USER31> I only buy ebooks these days. I love having access to the same material on any device without needing more bookshelves in my small apartment. However, I wish I didn't have to pay a premium for that convenience. I certainly cringe whenever I see a paperback price that's $2-3 cheaper than the ebook. I try not to even look at the used price.

<comment><USER32> Indie authors usually charge less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I only buy physical books in "collector grade" hardcover form anymore, and those are very few and far between and mainly for display.

It's infinitely more convenient to do 99% of normal reading on an e-reader. The recent surge in ebook pricing from amazon/etc does nothing but drive me to other (cheaper) forms of entertainment/leisure. I'm not spending $25 on an ebook, I don't care if it's by a NY Times Bestselling Author.

$9.99 is comfortably within the "impulse purchase" range and still provides an enormous margin over cost of production/distribution. $20+ is well outside the "impulse purchase" range for an intangible product like an ebook.

Not to mention that a "free" copy is literally 20 seconds and a few clicks away.

</comment><comment> chestnut-tree E-ink readers are small and suited mostly to black-and-white paperback-sized novels or non-fiction. That still leaves an enormous number of books (perhaps the majority) that don't fit the paperback size such as illustrated children's book, or oversized books or...anything with a non-standard layout or larger than paperback-size. Plus, the lack of colour in e-ink readers remains a severe limitation.

E-books have taken their place alongside print but I don't think many people expected them to displace print books. Certainly not with the current crop of e-readers.

</comment><comment><USER34> While lots of people are pointing to pricing as the reason for this decline, and that's obviously a big factor, I think you also have to look at the decline of the tablet here.

Phones just don't produce a really great reading experience. Actual computers are obviously never going to be a big market. Dedicated e-readers probably don't make sense to people who aren't voracious readers. And tablets are increasingly being squeezed out of the market.

<comment><USER35> >> Phones just don't produce a really great reading experience.

If i'm not mistaken, the kindle is 6".Many phone are 5.5" or 5" which isn't that different - especially with the fact you can control the zoom.

<comment><USER36> If I'm reading a book, I don't want to be zooming in and out. It's a pain to hold a phone one handed in a way that also promotes easy page turning without accidental page turning. Reading in bed while my partner sleeps is also a lot less intrusive on my Kindle than my phone (which annoys me too, as unless overridden, the brightness will be far too much in a dark room).

I love my iPhone/iPad. But they don't compare to the Kindle for reading experience, at least for me. I just wish color eInk would get here already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> One problem this article doesn't talk about is that people who get rejected from every publishing house (or who don't bother sending to traditional publishers) can now just throw their book on Amazon.

Ploughing through the slush pile was never seen as a fun job, so it's weird that the stuff in that pile is now being sold. [http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/may/23/thesh...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/may/23/theshockingtruthaboutthes)

There's no sensible way for me to find decent new content, so I stick to authors I already know (until they put out a duff book, where I drop them) or I read things like One Story which has let me discover some amazing writers. (eg Caitlin Horrocks [http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Is-Not-Your- City/dp/1932511911](http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Is-Not-Your- City/dp/1932511911) )

[https://www.one-story.com/](https://www.one-story.com/)

<comment><USER32> Although any moron can self-publish a book, the serious ones stand apart with professional book covers and blurbs, marketing, and multiple novels.

The ones who "trend" well often get picked up by traditional publishers or movie studios (as was the case with Andy Weir's "The Martian.")

The traditional publishing industry consists of trend-chasers, not trend- setters.

So yes, the self-publishing world is full of raw sewage, but there are some diamonds and gems in that sewage--and they usually look shiny, with endorsements and professional covers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't know my own reasoning, but I am part of this trend. I have owned every Kindle model from the very first up until the paperwhite. There were about 3 or 4 years where I did not read paper books. But recently I have gone to paper-only, and my Kindle sits uncharged. I can think of a few things I like about paper books (although I still love the Kindle):

      * Bookstores are awesome and getting a recommendation from an employee is much better than browsing Amazon.
      * Used books are cheap!  A used paperback is often cheaper than an eBook.
      * With paper I have sense of progress as I feel the right half of the book shrink as I read.
      * I can easily lend a friend a paper book, I have shared many books with people recently but with the Kindle they had to buy their own.

However I still think the Kindle paperwhite is one of the best single-purpose electronic devices ever (rivaling the iPod Classics). Amazing screen, lightweight, fairly cheap, etc. It's just made to read with, unlike an iPad or a laptop.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've got a Kindle Paperwhite which I've used every so often but I still prefer 'wads of dead tree' books. I bought it thinking 'hey this is the future!' and expecting myself to get a lot of use out of it but I just haven't really. Last five books I've read have been physical copies. The only use I really get out of it now is if I want something on short notice and am not willing to wait for a physical delivery, which isn't often.

People cite the storage space of e-books as a plus for using them over paper books, so you can have lots of books when you're on the move. I've never understood this though. When I'm commuting to work, or travelling on a plane or something, how likely is it I'm going to read two or more books in one sitting?

I can see it if you need lots of technical texts at hand for reference or something, but most people use e-books to read novels and I don't understand why you need your entire library of novels at your fingertips while you take the train 40 minutes to another town. You're not going to read two or more books in that travel time.

If I'm sitting at home I will _always_ prefer a hard copy of whatever I'm reading. In spite of how awesome people claim e-ink to be now I still find it much easier and more relaxing to read from paper, especially if it's a technical manual. Perhaps it's because I'm staring at computer screens all day at work, and when I program at home or play games. The last thing I want when reading for pleasure and to relax is to stare down at another screen.

Plus there is something meditative in the act of reading from a physical copy that I just don't get from an electronic device.

Then there is the issue of DRM which I am against in forms, and the dumb prices that are charged for e-books.

</comment><comment> artumi-richard One thing I've noticed since using an e-reader that I've not heard anyone else mention, is that I've become far less happy with the quality of print and the quality of the paper in the physical books I'm buying. I once read a book [1] that had unusually high quality paper which made it noticeably denser and the pages had more flex in them, which made one handed reading a doddle. It wasn't flawless, as the print would smudge if I rubbed my slightly moist fingers against it.

Still, every time I go to a book now I'm usually thinking "the type is too large" or "that font is awful" or "the paper is too thick".

I think it's time the industry had another look at how paperbacks in particular should look and feel, given the influence of the e-reader.

1: [http://www.amazon.com/Unreliable-Sources-20th-Century- Report...](http://www.amazon.com/Unreliable-Sources-20th-Century- Reported/dp/0330435639/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Multiple reasons why as a keen reader (a whale to the print publishing industry) I don't use ebooks.

\- DRM: When I pay for a book I want it on _any_ of _my_ devices _my whole life_ and I don't want to have to strip some crappy DRM first.

\- price: I can't justify how much more ebooks cost.

\- battery life: I get bored having to keep my existing devices charged I don't need another one to keep charged.

\- First sale: one has the right to lend physical books to friends and family, to me this social aspect is part of the reading experience.

\- Tracking: I like that I can buy a book for cash and no one counts how many pages I read and when I read it. Books are partly about intellectual freedom and tracking is the enemy of intellectual freedom.

\- Difficult to keep my place: For technical books I can look stuff up in books I know based upon rough location very quickly. E-reader devicies (in my opinion) need more skeumorphism.

</comment><comment><USER40> The NYTimes misinterpreted the AAP data it reported: [http://the-digital- reader.com/2015/09/23/nytimes-mistakes-le...](http://the-digital- reader.com/2015/09/23/nytimes-mistakes-legacy-publishing-stats-for-market- stats-foresees-the-decline-of-ebooks/)

A more complete look at the ebook market paints a very different picture: [http://fortune.com/2015/09/24/ebook- sales/](http://fortune.com/2015/09/24/ebook-sales/) [https://stratechery.com/2015/are-ebooks-declining-or-just- th...](https://stratechery.com/2015/are-ebooks-declining-or-just-the- publishers-oyster-goes-out-of-business-media-notes/)

</comment><comment><USER41> What's the current law regarding resale of ebooks? Do I "own" them or am I merely licensing them?

<comment><USER42> You do not own them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's definitely the price of ebooks. I started purchasing tangible books again in the last six months. They end up being almost always the same price as the ebook on Amazon, so I just donate the book to the public library when I am done with it.

</comment><comment><USER44> Could it just be the increased prices publishers forced on Amazon/ebooks? If a hardcover books costs the same as the ebook, I am also tempted to buy the hardcover.

The thinking is that I can sell it once i have read it, but I tend to forget about the hassles associated with physical stuff. The ebook would still be the better choice for me, but human psyche is too easily fooled.

Anyway, I expect that to be just a temporary "victory" for hardcover books.

I also seem to remember William Gibson tweet that the losses in ebook sales are mainly in young readers who can't afford the pricier versions, but I have no source for that.

So maybe both ebook and hardcover will simply lose out to YouTube.

</comment><comment><USER45> One of the reasons that I don't buy more e-books is because my Kindle's battery charge is often depleted. Somewhere along the line, Amazon changed airplane mode such that ads are still displayed all the time.

I haven't been an avid reader for the last year or two, and when I do get the urge, I pick up my Kindle only to find the battery is dead. While it's charging, I find something else to do. By the time I get the urge to read again, the battery is depleted again.

When you're an avid reader who remembers to charge his device regularly, the Kindle is great. When you're an intermittent reader, it just another electronic brick.

</comment><comment><USER46> I actually prefer to read scanned paperbacks on my ereader rather than the ebook versions. With my Samsung tablet they are the same size as a paperback, and the display looks like a paperback page. I like the typography, layout, and general imperfections of a scanned page. The letters are all slightly different, and are imperfectly placed. Ebooks are a bit too perfect and sterile.

I'd like to take it a step further and have the background be a scanned blank page, again so it looks a bit imperfect like paper does.

I buy the paperbacks, scan them (takes 5-10 minutes), then throw the book into the recycle bin.

<comment><USER47> How can you scan a paperback book in 10 minutes?

Curious about the kind of hardware-software set up that allows to do that in 10 minutes

<comment><USER46> Cut off the binding and use a sheet feeding scanner. Turning the pages sideways runs them through twice as fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This for me is good news. I love reading printed books. If it's a novel, then I enjoy being able to relax, away from an electronic screen, and go into another world for a time. I also love the feel and smell of books, and the cover art work. And browsing a book store to find my next read is, for me, much more of a pleasure than browsing Amazon. Also, there's something nice about a well filled bookshelf, and nosing through someone else's gives you a great sense of who that person is.

</comment><comment><USER49> I am not surprised. I wanted to buy a book and found the physical book price was $39 but I could get it used for about $8. The ebook was $28. Even without the used price option I would have rather had the physical book for the price difference between $39 and $28.

Ebooks would be more worthwhile to me at the current prices IF you could get updated versions of the book (errata not new content).

</comment><comment><USER20> For me a lot of the slow down has to do with how transparent it has made the publisher price model. I can buy a new book today for $15.00, wait a year and get it for $10, or wait longer and maybe get it for $5, if I haven't gotten it out of the library by then. Publishers want to tax me for my impatience, and I'm not going to fall for it.

<comment><USER6> The same thing is trashing the indie video game market on PC. Why buy a full- price game (unless you absolutely must have it now), when you can keep your ears open and snag it for pennies on a Humble Bundle deal, or at 10-25% on a Steam sale?

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> When I'm 85 I'll still be able to open a book I bought in 2012 and read it.

Text on paper ain't never changing file format.

<comment><USER51> EPUB is HTML, and that's not going anywhere, either.

<comment><USER52> Op is talking about time-spans longer than we've had the internet. Don't flatter yourself by thinking you can predict the future.

( Ironically, neither Firefox nor Opera opened a .epub file out-of-the-box. So much for compatibility. )

<comment><USER51> HTML still isn't going anywhere. Not with trillions of pages, it isn't.

We can still read cuneiform writing, and that's been around considerably longer.

"Ironically, neither Firefox nor Opera opened a .epub file out-of-the-box. So much for compatibility. "

An EPUB is a collection of ZIPed HTML files. Change the extension to .ZIP, unzip, open.

ZIP isn't going anywhere, either.

<comment><USER52> You are taking a strawman position. Take a look at the bigger picture, my other comment, and reevaluate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53>
      Big 5 publishers eBook sales have declined becuase of agency pricing. Overall eBook sales have not declined.

</comment><comment><USER54> A recent WSJ article suggests that the recent price increases in ebooks have caused both the drop in sales of ebooks and a drop in overall revenue for the publishers.

        http://www.wsj.com/articles/e-book-sales-weaken-amid-higher-prices-1441307826

</comment><comment><USER55> If they priced the e-books a bit more reasonably then they'd sell more.

<comment><USER56> I'd be willing to pay 10 bucks for a thousand page views of any books from Google Books (not all from a single book). I like to dig around. A page view should count as a page where I spent more than 5 seconds. What counts for me most is the full text search with highlight capability, and of course, the sheer number of books they have in there.

A single book should be much cheaper. I see ebooks priced at 100 bucks in the Google Books store.

<comment><USER55> To be honest the paying per page view somehow rubs me the wrong way. It'll make me think about cost whilst enjoying the book which I don't want.

I just want a reasonable price. e.g. I bought a book today. 10 GBP for paper. 5 for ebook. Thats pretty reasonable. Still good money but acknowledges that the real life costs are much lower. If its like 3% cheaper then thats just devoid of any link to real costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> This article just feels irrelevant and completely out of touch. As many people have pointed out here, e-books are insanely popular, just not necessarily through the traditional distributors.

Personally, I also believe that there's only one reason why the paper book isn't far less popular than it is, and it's entirely temporary.

Get out of the tech-minded echo chamber and ask a person why they would still buy a paper book when they could buy an e-book, and they'll pretty much only respond with "paper books just feel right to me".

The problem is completely unrelated to pricing. Since the beginning of time, people have comfortably navigated the sliding price structure of books. Some people want to buy the next Hunger Games on day 1, and they pay $39.99 to buy the hardcover and find out what happens to Katniss. Some people wait until the hype dies down. Some people borrow from a friend, and yes, some people still go to the library. And those exact same rules apply to e-books.

The entire conversation just reeks of idiocy and a bunch of industry coalitions blindly grasping around for places to point fingers because they apparently are overlooking the simple thing that everybody constantly says. I've already said it, but I'll say it again:

"Paper books just feel right to me."

Steve Jobs had a beautiful intuition about peoples' relationships with technology. It was a skill that's so painfully rare that he's still known as basically the only guy capable of figuring out what would make an advanced piece of technology attractive to an average person. Sadly, he was completely wrong about the iPad being an acceptable replacement for a book, and I feel like many people are continuing to follow him down the wrong path.

This has nothing to do with distribution and pricing. It has nothing to do with the cost of manufacturing an e-book being far less than a paper book. People still pay tons of money for games on Steam.

The single problem is that e-readers aren't good. They're garbage. That's it. Amazon is the clear leader, but it's not good enough. For anyone who wants to dominate the e-reader industry, here's your free advice:

1\. Make an e-reader with a beautiful e-paper screen capable of displaying full color.

2\. Make the screen refresh very quickly

3\. Give it sensible touch gestures that you never accidentally trigger, and give it very useful physical buttons.

4\. Make sure it can do everything a book can do. Can you quickly thumb through a 500 page novel on a kindle? Nope. Can you easily write something in the margin? Nope. Can you bookmark your current reading position, and also earmark a few other favorite spots in the book? Nope.

5\. Give it a non-tech appearance. Make the damn thing out of wood.

6\. Sell it in 3 sizes from day 1: The current standard paperback-ish size, as well as a smaller smartphone-sized one, and finally a large one, like ~15 inches.

Aside from the challenges of building a better color e-paper screen with great refresh, the others are just so obvious and so stupidly ignored. I'm actually frustrated just writing this. Make the e-reader personal, make it a lovable object. People will not stop throwing their money at this.

<comment><USER58> _> 1\. Make an e-reader with a beautiful e-paper screen capable of displaying full color._

Color drains battery life. Let this be a 2nd/3rd gen thing. Few books will take advantage of full illustrations. _This, however, can be huge for children 's books_.

 _> 2\. Make the screen refresh very quickly_

From my hardly-ever-use of a few e-readers. Is this really a problem?

 _> 3\. Give it sensible touch gestures that you never accidentally trigger, and give it very useful physical buttons._

Physical buttons are a dying out thing and a signal of you being part of an older generation. ;) The people I speak to hate physical buttons. While I also love actual, physical buttons, it's a dying fashion over touch.

 _> 4\. Make sure it can do everything a book can do. Can you quickly thumb through a 500 page novel on a kindle? Nope. Can you easily write something in the margin? Nope. Can you bookmark your current reading position, and also earmark a few other favorite spots in the book? Nope._

This needs entirely specialized/new software. DRM also limits the usefulness of such features. Adding a highlighting/favorites feature akin to Slack that you can easily browse on a per-book level would be a huge jump forward.

 _> 5\. Give it a non-tech appearance. Make the damn thing out of wood._

People want flashy. Make it shiny, not wood-like. Even books aren't wood-like tomes. Additional cases/skins/stickers are for personalization, not the form- factor itself.

 _> 6\. Sell it in 3 sizes from day 1: The current standard paperback-ish size, as well as a smaller smartphone-sized one, and finally a large one, like ~15 inches._

Two words: production costs. E-books and e-readers need to be popular before this can be a thing. Or huge, risk-taking investments need to occur. Which is unlikely.

<comment><USER36> "Color drains battery life. Let this be a 2nd/3rd gen thing. Few books will take advantage of full illustrations. This, however, can be huge for children's books."

1 - aren't we past generation 1 of eBook readers? Color might drain battery life more, but my Voyage gets well over 100 hours with Wifi off, even using the adaptive backlight. How much more is needed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> There are three huge problems that e-books haven't solved, which has been holding them back.

First, consumer surplus. (Read this if you haven't: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html)) Printed books use different editions and market availability to segment the market and bring in a significant amount of consumer surplus revenue. e-books have very weak mechanisms to capture consumer surplus, and that represents a huge potential loss of revenue. In theory it might be possible to make that up on the other end with higher volume (see, for example, steam sales and humble bundles) but so far e-book sales models have been too constrained to enable that to happen very often.

Second, commodity pricing. This is a big problem across the board in a lot of media (games, movies, music, etc.) but e-books have just doubled down on the same model. Books are not like dried beans, you don't just go to a store and buy books by the pound, but that's the model the industry has increasingly been rushing towards. With only popularity as the sole determinant of total revenue. This is a massively flawed model that hurts many talented writers and perverts the market in unhealthy ways.

Third, ownership. People with physical books can gift them to others, or sell them, or loan them. They can let their friends, their children, their other relatives, or their family's friends borrow them and read them. They are a profound asset of learning and shared culture. An e-book, however, is still by default a jealously guarded personal possession that cannot be easily loaned, sold, gifted, or inherited. Given the importance of books, this is a profound disadvantage of e-books.

Fourth, vendor lock-in. The average user experience with e-books represents a substantial dependency on a particular corporation (such as Amazon). If, say, Amazon went out of business it could be especially difficult to gain access to ones Amazon purchased e-books. Imagine, for example, some sort of world-wide disaster, and now there are no more new kindles, no more Amazon, etc. What happens when your one device storing all your books finally dies? This is similar to the ownership problem. Buying an e-book today is partly making a bet that the company that sold you that e-book will be around for as long as that book is relevant. Given the history of both corporations and of books, that's actually not a very smart bet.

e-books have a lot of short-term advantages but they have a lot of long-term disadvantages, at least as they exist today. That's not an intractable problem but it's one that so far the big powers in the e-book world have been deaf to hearing.</comment>


Google Thinks I'm a Middle-Aged Man. What About You? - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/01/25/google-cookies/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> Kind of wish there was a flag in the ID string that basically says, "This user is unlikely to click on your ad, ever. Save your advertising dollars".

I have "responded" to one GMail ad, ever. It was for tickets for a Pixies show, and I had not known they were touring. But I didn't click on it - I went to ticketmaster.ca and bought some seats for some friends and me. The ad wasn't placed by them, as far as I could tell, but they got the sale on someone else's ad budget.

Do many HN folks click on ads?

<comment><USER2> [EDIT] Cont'd:

Also, do folks around here actually "+1" and "Like" stuff on the web?

It seems to me like the people who actually click on ads are not likely to be the kinds of people that advertisers are actually trying to reach.

<comment><USER3> Sssshhhh - if more people thought this, Google would start _charging_ for products

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a pretty neat feature. I am a 25 years old male and my demographic is supposed to be:

Male, 35-44 \- Center Of Interests Computers & Electronics - Software - Freeware & Shareware Computers & Electronics - Software - Software Utilities

According to Google I am a cheap nerd older than I really am. Damn...

PS: Where's the porn ? (Kidding, or am I...)

<comment><USER5> Yahoo asked me my marital status eons ago, and I told them I'm married. It's still in my profile. Yet for most of a decade, they couldn't find anything better than dating site ads to show me. I just checked again, and things seem to be better, though pretty random: groceries, criminal record lookup, Scotttrade. The groceries might have been interesting if that chain wasn't the eighth closest one to my house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> By the way, you can opt-out from being tracked by Google's ads there from what I can see. Why do people say you can't opt out with the new privacy policy?</comment>


A Quick Guide to Sublime Text - <AUTHOR> http://jennifermann.ghost.io/a-quick-guide-to-sublime-text/ <comment><USER2> Sublime text is really nice, but I can't bring myself to ditching vim for Sublime, even with a nice, keyboard-shortcutted workflow.

Vim is just way too fast for me to leave.

<comment><USER3> I've always hesitated on VIM because it seems like such a behemoth to learn. Do you have any resources/guides to using/setting up/customizing VIM?

<comment><USER4> The only thing you need to read about Vim to get started is here: [http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/Learn-Vim- Progressiv...](http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/Learn-Vim- Progressively/), the rest is learned pretty much by the following principle:

1\. Detect inefficiency for a particular task 2\. Find a faster way to do it 3\. Make it a habit

You can learn more about this approach in this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6K4iIMlouI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6K4iIMlouI)

<comment><USER5> Those are the exact same steps it would take to learn to use Sublime Text!

<comment><USER6> Plus you already know half of it because it uses the same shortcuts as every other program in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use Sublime but I have vim envy; Most of the folks I work with use tmux and vim and using sublime makes me feel like a wannabe.

<comment><USER8> Why would you envy vim users?

Larry Tesler would cry if he knew of this strange vim-obsession that has been creeping up all over the interwebz.

I use Emacs and IntelliJ, both modeless editors, and I've never understood the obsession with vim, but I'll be happy if someone could enlighten me.

<comment><USER9> Well, in emacs you can try out evil-mode, which will get you the basic vim commands. I flip back and forth between the two: the vim commands are great when I'm focused on a single document, usually a hunk of code, and just have to make some something happen. On the other hand, if I'm flipping between editing a latex write-up, recording progress in org-mode, moving files around in dired, flipping between two different interpreters and several shells, the web browser, database query front-end, etc., then I start to get annoyed by the modes and prefer the flow I can get by not having to worry about editor state.

Right now I'm mostly using modeless interactions, but every now and then it feels good to get the vim muscles moving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're at all interested in sublime, you owe it to yourself to check out [http://brackets.io/](http://brackets.io/).

<comment><USER11> It's indeed a nice editor, but one main issue I have with it is that it doesn't detect the language of the file based on content, but solely on the file extension.

When working on websites you have your files like .js .html .css .php etc etc, but when working on system tools and scripts, a lot of these files lack the file extension and instead just defines the #! at the top of the file.

It doesn't even seem to be a way to manually specify that my file is of X language in the editor. According to the devs on their IRC channel, a feature like this isn't on the roadmap any time soon.

It's very unfortunate, but without this feature it's more hassle for me to work with it than with ST, or Vim.

<comment><USER12> Ctrl+Shift+P and type a language name to set it manually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I so badly _want_ to use ST, but I need a sidebar with a function list like several editors & IDE can generate (yeah, I know fuzzy search, no, it's not what I need).

Seriously, if anyone with enough python-foo wants to code this, I'm sending cash their way.

<comment><USER14> Which language are you using? Text editors like ST usually rely on third party tools like ctags to do the indexing (which is the hard part).

<comment><USER15> In fact, there seems to already be a Sublime Text plugin that uses ctags to offer a function list: [https://github.com/SublimeText/CTags](https://github.com/SublimeText/CTags). It apparently shows the tags in the file tree instead of in a separate pane, which some people may not prefer. But it sounds like basically what ozh wants.

<comment><USER13> Files are correctly parsed, .tag files are correctly generated, but for the life of me I cannot display anything anywhere.

Edit: although the "navigate to definition" feature is quite neat

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a big fan of the sublime-grunt packages ... [http://crosstek.net/2014/03/03/building-projects-with- grunt-...](http://crosstek.net/2014/03/03/building-projects-with-grunt-from- sublime-text-2/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Referring to Cmd as Super is sort of unnecessary when most of the shortcuts in question are specific to OS X and don't work on the other platforms with a Super key...

</comment><comment><USER18> Is Sublime still being updated?

<comment><USER19> From the ST forums:

[http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15477&h...](http://www.sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15477&hilit=status&start=50#p58951)

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

From the Sublime office: We are not selling to Github, we are not stopping development of Sublime. As noted by another poster, this is effectively a one man band (I'm here to answer sales questions, process your refunds and get the mail so Jon doesn't have to). The past few months of silence on the development front have been a combination of boring back end work (taxes, new payment platform) as well as a break for the man driving this whole operation. No, we don't currently have a loud internet presence, which is can be an understandable cause for concern-something we intend to address once we move into the production version of 3. There is a vision for continued growth and development, there is momentum behind Sublime Text; it is not dead, just slow.

</comment><comment></comment><comment>=

</comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for the ShortcutFoo tip!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you retain what you're reading? - <AUTHOR> I do a lot of reading these days, viz. HN and some programming-related books, but I've come to realize that I am able to retain very less information about whatever I read. Does anyone else face this issue? If Yes, what are the ways I could tackle this? <comment><USER2> Sorry, i'm usually a lurker, so I just created this account. I'm a high school student so reading textbooks is usually what I do, what I find it's not what I read that helps me unless I memorize everything, it is the practice that helps. When I was learning to program, this same principle applied. I would learn a concept and then try to make a program with it.</comment>


Ask PG/YC: Browse your old comments? - <AUTHOR>

I can't see any way to retrieve one's old comments from this site (for nostalgic, hindsight, or other purposes). Since I've been using it for a while, I presume this is intentional.<p>If so: Could we possibly allow this functionality? I'd like to be able to browse through some of my older comments, and to use them to find old threads that have long since vanished... If you'd like this as well, please vote this up... <comment><USER2> I use searchyc.com for this purpose. Works fine. Everything still exists...it's just not "reachable" directly through the HN UI.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://searchyc.com/user/swombat></comment>


Really Good Emails - <AUTHOR> http://reallygoodemails.com <comment><USER2> By the way, Really Good Emails is being built on Assembly as a community product. This means, its open sourced and revenue is split between the people developing it. You can see some of the improvements to the site everyone is planning:

[https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/posts/latest- priorit...](https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/posts/latest-priorities- for-really-good-emails) [https://assembly.com/really-good- emails/projects/29](https://assembly.com/really-good-emails/projects/29)

<comment><USER3> Which revenue?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suppose I have become too old. In "my day", HTML was just beginning to creep into email, and there was the beginnings of a huge religious war to keep mail in plain text.

I guess we lost. But my mail clients will be configured to send mail in plain text until the end of time.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, I get that a lot of people prefer html-email to email (text/plain), and I'm not going to argue with that. But if these are "really good emails" \-- do they embed all resources in the email in order to be off-line friendly, and privacy-friendly? Do they supply good, standards-compliant text-parts? If not, they certainly don't fit my definition of "really good emails".

Judging by the fact that there's no preview for text-only view, I'm guessing not...

</comment><comment><USER6> I was hoping for comedy. Instead I got the emails I mark as spam/unsubscribe from. :(

<comment><USER7> Exactly what I was thinking. Seriously, the overall vibe I get from many of these emails is either "email from some service I subscribed to, sending a generic greeting/reminder", or "outright spam". Definitely nothing that would strike me as important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was expecting more of a focus on content of emails instead of design.

</comment><comment><USER9> What makes these good emails? Are there some metrics on the engagement/response that these got or is it...?

I'm confused what the take away from this is supposed to be.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the idea -- a browsable archive of quality email layouts -- but most of the ones I looked at were pretty mediocre.

<comment><USER11> If you'd like to see a better submission process, it's an open-source product on Assembly: [https://assembly.com/really-good- emails](https://assembly.com/really-good-emails). There's been lots of talk about just forwarding an email to an address and having the community vote on what they think are great emails. It also made $1350 last month which is split between contributors so there's some financial incentive for you to jump in :)

<comment><USER12> How did it make $1350 in revenue? I can't see any revenue-generating aspects at first glance... it just looks like a user-submitted gallery site to me.

<comment><USER13> "Sponsored by Mailchimp" is absolutely a revenue-generating aspect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey folks, I started Really Good Emails to get more exposure to what people were doing. I'm hoping to have good critical dialogue about email campaigns on a forum more like hackernews or Product Hunt at some point soon. What else is it missing at the moment that you'd like to see?

</comment><comment><USER15> Are these "good" from a design aspect, or "good" because they convert?

<comment><USER16> Like most of these things, they're good because whoever is running these sites thinks they're good. They like pretty pictures.

There are a lot of people out there who want to try to justify their tastes by making them sound like they're rooted in some kind of scientific consensus but it's rather rare for that to actually be the case. Designers are especially vulnerable to this and the way that industry jumps on the bandwagon and self- righteously snubs anyone who doesn't do so with them is amazing.

To some of us, a good email is 1-2 lines of pure text, and we'd rather go without the bells, whistles, and tracking images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They're not text. They'd be better as text.

</comment><comment><USER18> These are meh. GitHub does email right.</comment>


Access UART ports - <AUTHOR> http://developer.sonymobile.com/knowledge-base/open-source/open-devices/how-to-access-uart-ports-on-xperia-devices/ <comment><USER2> I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, articles like this seem to indicate that Sony has become incredibly developer-friendly... but on the other hand, the recent Xperia phones wipe a DRM partition if you unlock the bootloader, irretrievably destroying keys that allow a bunch of things not work, such as some software that makes the camera actually good.

So we're stuck either not unlocking and rooting at all, or waiting for an (unlikely?) root exploit to be found that allows a custom recovery to be installed. And even then, running a custom kernel still requires unlocking the bootloader, so you can't run AOSP or CM, or any of the other mods. (Fortunately, with a root exploit, you can back up the DRM partition and restore it later, but still, it's not ideal.)

<comment><USER3> > it's not ideal.)

I'd bet good money that at least some of it is patent crapulence and the like.

<comment><USER4> Sony DRMs _everything_ and has weird media formats on top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is generous of them to provide this information when most manufacturers are doing everything they can to prevent people from modifying their devices.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow this is way more transparency than I'm used to seeing from Sony. Hopefully it's not just a one-off thing.

<comment><USER7> They've been focusing on being open on the mobile front for several years now. I'm still waiting for them to drop their horrible skins and move to stock android. Or at least make the skins optional. The Z#c line-up is, imo, in a class of it's own. It's nice to have a phone that's actually small, light, with a great camera, and amazing battery life. If only they'd ditch the skin!

<comment><USER8> Any comments on Sony's tablet line-up? I'm looking for a replacement for my now EOL Nexus 7 (2012 edition) tablet and looking for one in the 8-9 inch category, mainly for off-line reading (ePUB files) and web browsing.

My main requirement is an OS that is getting updates on a semi-regular basis.

<comment><USER9> A 2013 N7 (though that's losing support very soon), a NVidia tablet (the newest one is a great performer, only $200), Asus ZenPad S 8 (or whatever it is -- the 2GB RAM variant is great for the price, though updates are iffy). The Nexus 9 gets updates, but its performance isn't the best, and people say the build is very bendy.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. I forgot to mention that I live in Singapore. So getting the NVIDIA tablet or the Nexus 9 locally is difficult (no direct distributor).

I may take a look at the Asus ZenPad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The parameters are 115200, -> 8n1 <-…… Remember to enable kmsg to UART in the kernel commandline and … personally, I use PuTTY on Linux as well (just give the right permissions to the tty device you're going to use).

About cmdline parms, note that downstream and mainline DO differ, so take this as reference: Downstream 3.4/3.10/QC kernels: console=ttyHSL0,115200,n8 Mainline, korg 4.4-rc4 currently: console=ttyMSM0,115200,n8

Aside from this, and if you're a developer you actually should know, here's a lil cool info: you can also use an Arduino to communicate with your device on UART…. Just be sure to NOT connect any VCC to the board, otherwise … you'll have to say goodbye!

Wiring UART is a serious thing and requires soldering experience: use good, non-conductive flux in VERY SMALL quantities and possibly thin-as-hair insulated wires.

My suggestion is to fix those wires somewhere in your phone and "export" thicker ones outside of the phone, practicing a small hole in the housing: this will make your "mod" to last longer, and will make it "safer" since you won't be never anymore touching the mainboard with a soldering iron.

That said… this post finally gives wonderful pieces of informations to all of the very experienced developers out there who want to experiment very new, wonderful things, opening nearly endless possibilities on Sony platforms.

Also, Sony has got a wonderful open device "section" on their Developer World website, you may want to check it out: [http://developer.sonymobile.com/knowledge-base/open- source/o...](http://developer.sonymobile.com/knowledge-base/open-source/open- devices/)

...and even if it seems that they are just playing with AOSP, they are effectively creating a good, sane base with clean code that can be also easily used for porting/running alternative OSes, like Sailfish, FirefoxOS etc, like you can see on the Mozilla page here: [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/build-and-run-firefox- os-o...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/10/build-and-run-firefox-os-on-sony- open-devices/)

So..... hands up for Sony's friendship with the opensource community!

</comment><comment><USER11> This seems like it would make Xperia phones a potentionally great platform for prototyping of IoT devices that would benefit from a cellular radio. The UART port would be used to connect to a microcontroller which would use protocols such as I2C, SPI, and SDIO to connect to peripherals.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just FYI: this is also available for most Chinese Android phones.

<comment><USER4> Is there a reliable site for reviews of Chinese Android phones?

I'm tempted, but it's hard to know which are good and which are terrible.

<comment><USER12> You should check the devices made by Tinno Mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Beta program for custom ROM's: [http://developer.sonymobile.com/services/flash- tool](http://developer.sonymobile.com/services/flash-tool)

But it's a Windows .exe. How about other OS?

PS3 is FreeBSD, isn't it?

Hey Sony, how about a BSD "phone"? Even a pocket-sized WiFi device with no baseband could be very useful.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Sony shows how to access UART ports of some Xperia devices</comment>


The Single Sign-On War Will Ruin OpenID - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/30/the-single-sign-on-war-will-ruin-openid/ <comment><USER2> This nails it. All the big players are becoming OpenID providers, but without actually accepting identifiers from other providers (i.e. they're not "relying parties"), which is nearly as bad for OpenID as not implementing it all.

I just hope that these plays by Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google to become the de- facto identity provider backfire and they get stuck in a 33.333% share stalemate (among themselves), forcing each to eventually become R.P.s.

Or maybe consumers will magically realize they should use some 3rd party provider. Hah.

<comment><AUTHOR> OpenID is sufficiently complex and most consumers have no idea how to use it. Whoever manages to make it easy for consumers to use it might win. I say might because most people will still prefer creating separate accounts on sites to preserve their privacy.

And don't forget FB... if they execute fbConnect right, they'll dwarf all these other ones and make OpenID, or whatever it will evolve into, obsolete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> These moves by the big players are of major interest (some would suggest worry but I don't think so yet) at the moment - because my startup (:D) is actually along the same lines.

To be honest I think OpenID is less a standard now and more a Buzz word. Everyone is doing it subtly differently.

Also of course you have the problem where some ID's will be "worth" more than others - just because of the provider.

The original concept of OpenID was awesome: everyone could have a page/url identified as theirs and theirs alone. And they could use that identity in all sorts of places.

The trouble is the execution was bad and so these larger companies are now jumping on it to twist it into their idea of a single sign on.

I think FB Connect is a much better system personally. But not the best.

And then there is us :D we're creating a single sign on & social networking site that is designed on a trust basis. The one thing I dislike about OpenID is how decentralised it is. I dont see the issue (personally) with having 4 or 5, trusted, ID providers who manage all the ID's. This gives consumers the choice of who to trust their "ID" with. But it also means the 5 providers collaborate together in a way that can't be "trust poisoned".I'm hoping that's where we come in....

</comment><comment><USER4> This is totally untrue. I sat in a room with every one of the major players last week. There is discussion and there is a sense that everyone wants to be in the same place. We haven't reached the exact solution right now but believe me we are talking. Look at [http://therealmccrea.com/2008/10/20/live-blogging- the-openid...](http://therealmccrea.com/2008/10/20/live-blogging-the- openidoauth-ux-summit/)

While Google are launching what they have that doesn't mean everyone doesn't want to move to the same place.

</comment><comment><USER5> Brad Fitzpatrick (inventor of OpenID) linked to this article, from his blog, without commentary. Brad is a Googler now, so maybe this is his way of telling us what he thinks.

<http://brad.livejournal.com/2394939.html></comment>


I Found Myself Accused of Stealing Code from WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@talkol/how-i-found-myself-accused-of-stealing-code-from-wordpress-a7350da9f9f2#.g8h9b4eql <comment><USER2> Correct me if I'm wrong but this post does nothing to explain why the license of Wix's library is MIT while based on prior art which was GPL, thus infringing on the GPL license, which is the whole point Matt is discussing about in his initial post.

<comment><USER3> Wix's library appears to be a wrapper for Wordpress's GPL library. I am not a GPL expert, but I believe that Wix has the right to publish their wrapper code using any license they like. Publishing their code as MIT is not the same as them trying to change the license of someone elses code. Wix explicitly state it in their github repo:

> Code in this git repo is licensed MIT, please consider the licenses of the > dependencies separately.

With a link to the Wordpress library.

Regardless, reading Matt's original post, I see that his complaint was not about relicensing at all. It was more to do with whether Wix's app is allowed to use Wordpress's GPL'd code, without attribution or providing the source to their entire application.

The whole thing (IMHO) boils down to whether you can use a GPL'd lib in a codebase without having to:

1\. provide attribution

2\. apply GPL your entire codebase

I believe 1 is not required. A quick google says 2 is not "ok". If you use a GPL lib in your application, you must open source your entire application (LGPL is the GPL license created to allow you to use a GPL lib without "infecting" your codebase with the GPL).

That said, I can understand someone misunderstanding the implications GPL and believing they don't have to open source their work that utilises a GPL library.

What I believe should have happened is that Matt from WP should have reached out Tai from Wix and quietly informed them of their obligations WRT using their GPL'd license, giving Wix the opportunity to correct what could have been an honest mistake.

Taking this public and accusing people of "stealing"[0], as a first step, is a selfish action will make people even more wary of using GPL'd code in their projects.

[0] I hate it when people abuse the word "stealing" WRT intellectual property rights, it smacks of either dishonesty or ignorance.

<comment><USER4> Mullenwegg sees Wix as a competitor, so he has no incentive to keep it on the quiet. If more people stay away from Wordpress code to build Wordpress competitors, that's a net win for him.

The GPL is extremely protective of the code it covers. This protection can be used positively ("hey man, if you use my code it's only fair that you share yours, wanna collaborate?") or negatively ("dude, you used that code in ways you are not supposed to - stop immediately and stay away from it if you don't understand how it works"). This is why it's a bloody good license, for people who understand it and are ready to enforce it.

<comment><USER5> > This is why it's a bloody good license, for people who understand it and are > ready to enforce it.

One of the direct intentions of the GPL was to prevent freeloading (which the MIT license allows).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blog post from WiX CEO [http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg- an-open-...](http://www.wix.com/blog/2016/10/dear-matt-mullenweg-an-open- letter-from-wix-coms-ceo-avishai-abrahami/)

<comment><USER7> Wow, the ongoing ignorance here is really not doing them any favors. They really need to stop talking here if Mullenweg wants to escalate this into a legal claim.

This could be construed willful:

      Yes, we did use the WordPress open source library for a minor part of the application

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is all well and good but doesn't change the fact that the Wix app is violating the GPL. They need to fix it. I don't see any commitment from Wix or Tal Kol that this will happen.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could someone please explain whether or how an iPhone app has PHP code from Wordpress included with it?

<comment><USER9> The Wordpress application also includes frontend code, including the HTML/Javascript library that is at issue in this dispute.

<comment><USER8> Oh great, thanks! If the app wasn't distributed with the html/css/js but downloaded from a server, would that skirt around the GPL requirements?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I writing an APP to APP Store, and I don't want to give the FULL source code away. I must not use GPL code. Is it?

<comment><USER11> Pretty much, yes. That's the whole point of the GPL.</comment></comment>


According to Apple, Safari is the only HTML5 Compliant Browser - <AUTHOR> http://apple.com/html5/

<comment><AUTHOR> that is, demos are not available if you use chrome or firefox.

      You'll need to download Safari to view this demo.
      This demo was designed with the latest web standards
      supported by Safari. If you'd like to experience this demo,
      simply download Safari. It's free for Mac and PC, and it
      only takes a few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER2> Requiring Safari 4: How is that any different than requiring a plugin, unless you just happen to already use Safari?</comment>


Mass Extinction and the Structure of the Milky Way (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4838 <comment><USER2> As a non-astronomer, I hadn't thought of that but now that I read the abstract, it makes complete sense (assuming evidence supports the thesis)

\- Might be related to why moon's surface is so scarred and yet in many centuries of recorded (astronomical) history (since the invention of telescope) we haven't seen any major lunar impact events.

\- Also I was reading the other day how our solar system is going through a local "bubble" (region of unusually low interstellar density) but is heading towards a certain G-Cloud.

Mind blowing stuff. I guess once we have fixed the planetary mess (climate change) and biological-aging, we'd have a serious type-I [2] problem to worry about (and we can't even handle/track the inner solar system objects yet, NEO, asteroids, etc).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#Galactic_context](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#Galactic_context)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)

<comment><USER3> What needs to be _fixed_ about biological aging exactly?

<comment><USER2> Ehh ... it needs to be eliminated? [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension)

<comment> semi-extrinsic I never understood the people who argue for indefinite life extension. Imagine a world _with essentially no children_. No generation of young adults growing up and spurring change in the world. I think it would not just take away a crucial part of the human experience, but our entire economic system would collapse. There's just too much of it tied into the constant churn of people.

(Of course, you might imagine indefinite life extension springing into existence only after we've started rapid colonisation of space; a pipe dream if I ever saw one. Even then, Earth would still be holden to what I describe.)

In two-three generations, most everyone alive in the countries where life extension was widely adopted would be old farts that didn't want to take up much further debt, with few new ideas and not much drive left in them. "Science advances one funeral at a time", as do many other fields key to human progress.

Meanwhile, the countries too poor to see mass adoption of life extension would out-grow and out-innovate our collective asses faster than you can say "collapse of Western civilisation".

So you'd live forever, but in increasing poverty (due the countries that produce most of the things you buy having much higher growth than yours) in a stagnant, crumbling society.

If we were to invent indefinite life extension that was affordable beyond the 0.1%, I think it would be the ultimate tragedy of the commons.

<comment><USER4> You embody my greatest fear and annoyance in this area.

I think it's perfectly possible that, within my lifetime, significant or indefinite life extension could become possible.

But I'd bet that fears about effects on society, as well as the arrayed forces of religious conservatism, will create so much strife on the matter that it'll be denied to people for long enough that I'll die unnecesarily.

<comment><USER3> Ironically your wish to "live eternally" kind of sounds like something out of the bible ;)

<comment><USER4> Not really, I said indefinitely. There's not really such thing as eternal.

For instance - in under a billion years the earth is likely to become too hot for liquid water to exist on the surface, likely seeing the end of (most) life on earth. Beyond that, much/most of the solar system gets destroyed when the sun goes red-giant. Unless interstellar travel is commonplace by then, it's pretty final.

<comment><USER5> Oh, come on. The reason we balk at interstellar travel these days is because it'll take thousands of years to get to the nearest star with current propulsion technology. But thousands of years is still far less than 1B years. If we're still around in several hundred million years and the Earth is getting too hot, and we haven't invented warp drive yet, then of course we're going to build a bunch of generation ships and take our chances in interstellar space. By that point, it really shouldn't be that hard to build such ships that are reliable enough to last indefinitely, powered by fusion reactors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From Wikipedia entry on milky way, "These oscillations were until recently thought to coincide with mass lifeform extinction periods on Earth.[148] However, a reanalysis of the effects of the Sun's transit through the spiral structure based on CO data has failed to find a correlation.[149]".

Those papers are from 2008 and 2009. Is this paper proposing something different?

</comment><comment><USER7> Neat coincidence to see this on the front page today. On the train this morning I was re-reading David Brin's "The Deadly Thing at 2.4 Kiloparsecs". His 1984 article examining Earth's fairly regular mass extinctions and what might be causing them.

As a new forward to the story, Brin mentions the OP-linked theory.

Imho, the article still holds up well and you can read it here: [http://davidbrin.blogspot.jp/2015/07/the-deadly-thing- at-24-...](http://davidbrin.blogspot.jp/2015/07/the-deadly-thing- at-24-kiloparsecs-are.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> "significant reductions in diversity at 415, 322, 300, 145 and 33 Myr ago" \- it seems that periods between extinctions events are so large that you can easily fit there hundreds and even thousands of civilizations like ours. So not much to worry about, we will have plenty of opportunities to kill ourselves before a comet does us in.

<comment><USER9> I'm not a math wizard but going by that pattern it seems the periods are getting shorter.

I tried to find a sequence [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=415,+322,+300,+145,+33...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=415,+322,+300,+145,+33,+..).

<comment><USER10> The periods (intervals between events) there would be [93, 22, 155, 112] My. That doesn't look like they're getting shorter.

<comment><USER11> But they _are_ getting closer! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmmm. If this hypothesis held up, you'd want to factor it into the Drake Equation. Number of systems that didn't cross some threshold of intensity or frequency of arm crossing events that could cause mass extinctions often enough to make intelligent life impossible to develop.

Or something like that.

<comment><USER13> I suppose it's possible that just the right amount of mass extinction events are necessary for intelligent life to emerge.

Too many and evolution doesn't build up any momentum, too little and there isn't enough change to make intelligence (i.e. adaptability) worth having. So the Drake equation would need to be looking for that Goldilocks zone of mass extinctions.

<comment><USER14> Isn't the reverse just as likely, that many potential paths to intelligence were snuffed out by extinction events. The currently accepted theory is that it the evolutionary pressure of climate change was enough for us to evolve intelligence.

<comment><USER15> I think that humans as a species are more likely to survive a mass extinction event (even if 99% of the population is killed) through manipulation of their environment, stored food, eating rodents, insects and fish, and the cooperation of communities for having babies and raising children. Therefore, mass extinctions might serve as a winnowing out of dominant species that can't adapt to major changes. Of course the adaptability of humans has not yet been tested in that way (unless you count the recent ice age.)

Also there is the whole "multi-planetary species" option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is eerily similar to the plot of The Three-Body Problem[1], specifically the cyclical development of intelligent life and its race to avoid mass extinction caused by intersecting one of three suns in its stellar system.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three- Body_Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem)

<comment><USER17> I heard this is a great book but could not get into this book. I was listening to an audio book. Maybe I should try a physical book next time.

<comment><USER16> Highly recommend (I read the physical book). It picks up after the first 100 pages or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm a bit puzzled here. I thought the arms themselves were moving around the galactic core. What does the Sun pass then? Little hint?

<comment><USER19> _Originally, astronomers had the idea that the arms of a spiral galaxy were material. However, if this were the case, then the arms would become more and more tightly wound, since the matter nearer to the center of the galaxy rotates faster than the matter at the edge of the galaxy. The arms would become indistinguishable from the rest of the galaxy after only a few orbits. This is called the winding problem._

 _Lin and Shu proposed in 1964 that the arms were not material in nature, but instead made up of areas of greater density, similar to a traffic jam on a highway.[3] The cars move through the traffic jam: the density of cars increases in the middle of it. The traffic jam itself, however, does not move (or not a great deal, in comparison to the cars). In the galaxy, stars, gas, dust, and other components move through the density waves, are compressed, and then move out of them._

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> So how long till next arm?

<comment><USER21> I don't know where we stand now, but there are two arms and a galactic year is ~250 million terrestrial years, so I'd say a priori on average ~250/2/2 = ~60 million years from now.

<comment><USER22> There are two thick arms, and two thin ones in the picture, as well as a spur (the Orion Spur in which our Sun presently dwells). The article postulates the existence of a second spur on the far side of the galaxy where we can't see, based on the history of extinction events in the past 250 million years and the observed symmetry of many other spiral galaxies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Full text: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.4838.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.4838.pdf)

With what reasoning or evidence do they propose their new model of the galaxy?

Is it:

\- extinction events, therefore new model

or

\- astronomical data, therefor new model, and look how nicely it correlates with known extinction events

<comment> T-A A bit of both.

They say that with the model depicted in Fig 1, based on Spitzer/GLIMPSE surveys [1], nine of eleven extinction events which they identify (the six "canonical" ones plus five other significant drops in marine biodiversity, Section 2.2) occurred while the solar system was passing through a spiral arm (Section 3).

They then point out that it's easy enough to modify the model to fit all eleven events: we can't see what's on the other side of the galaxy, so we can hypothesize a "spur" there, similar to the Orion spur on our side, with some support for that idea coming from the symmetry of other galaxies.

But even without such modifications, nine out of eleven is not bad. Spiral arms need not necessarily explain every single one of them.

[1] [http://inspirehep.net/record/817646?ln=en](http://inspirehep.net/record/817646?ln=en)

<comment><USER23> Great summary. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's an excellent interview of Jonti Horner by John Batchelor on this topic (free podcast):

[https://audioboom.com/posts/4827661-mass-extinction-and- the-...](https://audioboom.com/posts/4827661-mass-extinction-and-the- structure-of-the-milky-way-joint-horner?t=0)

</comment><comment><USER24> Interested parties should also look at the work of Dr. Adrian Melott[0].

[0] [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GWB114EAAAAJ&hl=en...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GWB114EAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)

</comment><comment> ryan-allen I wonder when we're due for another crossing?

<comment><USER25> We're in the middle of the (minor) Orion Arm right now: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Arm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Arm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This isn't new. I remember reading about this years ago. I suppose the new contribution is offering an actual model to do this.

</comment><comment><USER17> One of the reasons why we need to find a way to get to Mars and other places where humans can thrive. If we were the only wonder in the world, imagine the travesty of getting wiped out.

<comment><USER27> How would Mars help? Mars, like Earth, is on a tight (1.6 AU) gravitational leash of the Sun. When the Sun dives into one of the galactic arms, so do Mars and Earth.

That said, interplanetary travel is probably something we need to get good at before we try the interstellar kind, so in a way, Mars settlement brings us a tiny bit closer to galactic safety.

<comment><USER28> If I'm reading that paper correctly, then we need more than interstellar capability, we need near-intergalactic capabilities. We would have to be solidly past a Kardashev Type II and almost attaining a Type III classification, to either move our own solar system, or establish habitats in safer galactic zones outside the arms (like outside the galactic poles or positioned above the arms). Perhaps these transitions is the Fermi Paradox's Great Filter: might it be exceedingly difficult for a civilization to hit the Kardashev Type II-III level and implement the necessary avoidance/mitigation sufficiently fast enough?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wasn't this theory part of the inspiration of the story arc for the Mass Effect games?

</comment><comment><USER30> Not so goldilocksie after all

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Abstract: "We use the most up to date Milky Way model and solar orbit data in order to test the hypothesis that the Sun's galactic spiral arm crossings cause mass extinction events on Earth. To do this, we created a new model of the Milky Way's spiral arms by combining a large quantity of data from several surveys. We then combined this model with a recently derived solution for the solar orbit to determine the timing of the Sun's historical passages through the Galaxy's spiral arms. Our new model was designed with a symmetrical appearance, with the major alteration being the addition of a spur at the far side of the Galaxy. A correlation was found between the times at which the Sun crosses the spiral arms and six known mass extinction events. Furthermore, we identify five additional historical mass extinction events that might be explained by the motion of the Sun around our Galaxy. These five additional significant drops in marine genera that we find include significant reductions in diversity at 415, 322, 300, 145 and 33 Myr ago. Our simulations indicate that the Sun has spent ~60% of its time passing through our Galaxy's various spiral arms. Also, we briefly discuss and combine previous work on the Galactic Habitable Zone with the new Milky Way model."

TL;DR: our Sun's bumpy orbit through the spiral arms of out galaxy means periodic increases of comets and other bodies being jarred loose and later hitting Earth, resulting in mass extinctions.

The full paper is a free download from this page.

<comment><USER31> ...Huh. I always assumed that most stars kept approximately the same position relative to the rest of the galaxy. (Barring "up/down" oscillation if the orbital plane isn't perfectly aligned with the galaxy's.) There must be some kind of overall structure to maintain distinct spiral arms, right?

Does the Solar System actually make a complete circuit of the bulk of the Milky Way? Is that unusual?

<comment><USER32> The spiral arms are not fixed masses. If they were, they would quickly wind themselves up tighter and tighter, as the inner areas are orbiting faster than the outer parts. Within a short time the spiral arms would be dispersed.

Instead, you can think of the spiral arms as being like the highest-density part of a traffic jam. In a traffic jam, cars are slowing down and bunching onto the back of the queue, while other cars are finally trickling off the front of the queue and speeding back up. In this way the traffic jam itself stays in a stable position, while individual cars constantly move through it.

In other words, it isn't the same stars that make up the spiral arms over time. As stars orbit the galactic center, they move in and out of the spiral arms.

<comment><USER33> Put a different way, a galaxy's spiral arms are like waves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Maybe update the title to say (2013)?

</comment><comment><USER35> There's interesting parallels with the Hindu Yugas here. [https://www.thoughtco.com/the-four-yugas-or- epochs-1770051](https://www.thoughtco.com/the-four-yugas-or-epochs-1770051)

<comment><USER36> It might be interesting if the people who invented the Yugas could have had any awareness of mass extinctions and the structure and behavior of the galaxy. Since they surely didn't, there's obviously no connection at all and it's not interesting - just made up myths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Oh shut up.

The number of people that keep living in denial and rationalization of their sub-optimal circumstance astounds me.

Just face it and be honest. There is nothing noble in being a 50 year old for an infinity given the option to be youthful and mentally/physically fit instead.

Vanity, superficiality, shallowness... All these buzzwords that criticize something that is perfectly natural to desire, in an effort to signal some higher moral ground.

Come on.

<comment><USER38> Yea I am signalling the moral high ground because HN is full of fucking sociopaths who want to live forever so they can execute their dumb ass startup until the heat death of the universe or learn new languages - at the expense of completely fucking up the world and our place in it. It helps to take a look in the mirror sometime.

Life extension technology is going to ruin humanity and the earth. Look up this comment in fifty years and tell me I'm wrong.

<comment><USER39> Make that 500 years, and you might get some takers to seal the deal ....

<comment><USER38> Fair point. I will extend my offer even up to a thousand years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is this supposed to be some sort of academic joke? Reminds me of [http://tylervigen.com/old-version.html](http://tylervigen.com/old- version.html) Maybe this isn't, sometimes science do work in strange ways.</comment>