Extra Future

Hi, I’m Phil Nelson, a writer, developer, and audio-visual maker of stuff. I have been making stuff online for over 25 years. I run RetroStrange and Set Side B. Good to see you.

Blog Archives

Tag: amazon

  • Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance

    Matthew Guariglia for the EFF DeepLinks blog:

    Ring is rolling back many of the reforms it’s made in the last few years by easing police access to footage from millions of homes in the United States. This is a grave threat to civil liberties in the United States. After all, police have used Ring footage to spy on protestors, and obtained footage without a warrant or consent of the user. It is easy to imagine that law enforcement officials will use their renewed access to Ring information to find people who have had abortions or track down people for immigration enforcement. 

    Don’t use Ring. Don’t let your friends use Ring.

  • aws – simple access to Amazon EC2 and S3

    [A working and feature-rich command-line interface for Amazon S3 and EC2][link]. Pretty cool. via [@joshu][josh]

    [link]: http://timkay.com/aws/ “aws – simple access to Amazon EC2 and S3”
    [josh]: http://twitter.com/joshu

  • Amazon Isn’t Paying License Fees for “Cloud Drive”

    [paidContent:][link]

    >Amazon has launched its new online music locker and streamer without any licenses from the labels whose material it will store and distribute, the labels’ umbrella group IFPI tells paidContent. Not a problem, replies Amazon—licenses aren’t necessary for its new Cloud Drive.

    The music industry is (and has been) [suing MP3Tunes][sue] because they’ve offered precisely the same service. If Amazon sticks to their guns it will be a big win for everyone who buys digital content.

    [link]: http://m.paidcontent.org/article/419-without-licenses-amazons-cloud-player-walks-a-high-wire/ “paidContent – Mobile”
    [sue]: http://www.ipodnn.com/articles/10/11/02/mp3tunes.says.case.win.may.help.apple.and.google/ “MP3tunes: lawsuit win might help iTunes cloud locker”

  • Amazon.com’s 1-Click Patent Confirmed Following Re-Exam

    [This is just plain terrible news][link]. It’s the software equivalent of someone having a patent on “cash-only.” It’s a technology (and I hesitate to even call it a technology) so completely obvious that it makes the entire patent system look ridiculous by it’s inclusion.

    This re-exam sticks us with another 4 years of the [legal][bnn] [strong-arming][appl] of companies and people who try to make internet shopping experiences better.

    [link]: http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/03/amazons_1-click_patent_confirmed_following_re-exam.html “Amazon.com’s 1-Click patent confirmed following re-exam”
    [bnn]: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-231798.html “Amazon.com sues Barnes and Noble over 1-click”
    [appl]: http://news.cnet.com/Apple-licenses-Amazons-1-Click/2100-1017_3-245879.html “Apple Licenses Amazon.com’s 1-click patent”

  • John Scalzi on the Amazon / Macmillan Spat

    In a post titled “[All The Many Ways Amazon So Very Failed the Weekend][link],” he goes into short detail along the very lines you might expect.

    Amazon so badly mis-handled this situation that one wonders if the entire company wasn’t under the spell of a wizard, or if a very strong sedative was released into the ventilation system.

    [link]: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/01/all-the-many-ways-amazon-so-very-failed-the-weekend/ “All The Many Ways Amazon So Very Failed the Weekend « Whatever”

  • Amazon Relational Database Service

    [Amazon’s new MySQL cloud service][link].

    [link]: http://aws.amazon.com/rds/ “Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)”

  • Amazon.com Now Selling WiiWare Game Codes

    Following the Xbox Live Arcade codes, this is no surprise, but nice to see. Also of interest to me: Amazon does not allow their associates to get commissions on these cards. Profit margin must be close to zero, if not into the red.

  • [Sponsor] The Extra Future Amazon Store

    In which, among other lovely items, you’ll find what I’m currently reading: Hello Americans by Simon Callow.

    This is the second volume of Callow’s biography on film legend Orson Welles (the first being 1997’s The Road To Xanadu) and it is every bit as worthy a portrait of Welles as it’s predecessor. It covers Welles’s life post-Kane, including the hatchet-job that RKO unleashed on The Magnificent Ambersons. It’s tone is one of someone who neither demonizes or worships Welles, but seeks to find the truths of his life.

    Sponsorship of Extra Future is available on a first-come, first-served basis. If you’d like to sponsor the site, contact me.

  • Hacker-Troll “Weev” Taking Credit For the #amazonfail Controversy

    I don’t know if I buy it, but it makes about as much sense as Amazon being suddenly homophobic.

  • The LA Times on Amazon’s “De-Ranking” of Books Deemed Too Adult

    This is quickly turning into a PR coup for Amazon. The gist of this is that most of the books labeled as “adult” and made hard to find on Amazon’s site are lesbian, gay, transgender or bisexual-themed, or even just LGBT-friendly. This is extremely bad form on the part of Amazon, as not showing up on best-seller lists or search pages can cripple the sales of a book. One of the books affected is “Unfriendly Fire” by Nathaniel Frank, which now doesn’t show up on bestseller lists on Amazon.com despite it’s selling of more copies than the entire Twilight series.

    The #amazonfail tag on Twitter is spreading very quickly in response to this, and I encourage the use of it.