Adobe Updates Digital Edition, Stops Sharing User Info With the Internet – Nate Hoffelder reports that Adobe has stopped sending data on the books you’re reading back to Adobe in plain text. Adobe insists that: “Enhanced security for transmitting rights management and licensing validation information. With this latest version of Digital Editions 4.0.1, the data is sent to Adobe in a secure transmission (using HTTPS).” I don’t distrust Hoffelder on this, but I’m sure as hell not read to trust Adobe yet – on anything.
Update: I’ve heard from another tester who identified that Adobe was using SSL, and that it didn’t appear to be sending any data at all (for DRM-free ebooks). But if you activate a DRMed ebook Adobe does send a lot of encrypted information. Removing that DRMed ebook stopped the app from sending info. Thanks, Michael!
Second Update: I have an independent confirmation that Adobe only uploads data after a DRMed ebook has been activated. –The Digital Reader
For $2,500 You Can Now Own Joan Didion’s Sunglasses – Yet another meditation on the art of author branding from the New Republic, but this one decidedly less excited about the new Kickstarter campaign for a documentary on Joan Didion, which filmmaker Griffin Dunne — Didion’s nephew — is co-directing. The “undignified” campaign, which seeks to raise $80,000 (they’ve already surpassed that at $119,452, with almost a month yet to go), provides some interesting incentives to donation, including a couple pairs of the writer’s own sunglasses.
I don’t know – how is this any worse than auctioning off Queen Elizabeth’s knickers on eBay?
Didion is one of the greatest living writers, but her legacy at times seems at risk of being subsumed by her lifestyle brand—thin, chic, Californian. “They were my aunt and uncle but they were also probably the hippest people on earth,” Griffin Dunne says about Didion and her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, in a video about the project. It’s hard to imagine that Dunne, with all his connections (he’s been producing/directing/acting for over two decades, and his father was the Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne) had no other way to get this film made than by hawking his aunt’s fingernail clippings. –New Republic
INCREDIBLY, GAMERGATE IS WINNING – BUT YOU WON’T READ THAT ANYWHERE IN THE TERRIFIED LIBERAL MEDIA – Note: I have used donotlink, so the site will not be logging traffic from DA for this story.
I was originally going to post the story about Felicia Day, but when I was Googling to see what else was going on around that story, this Breitbart link came up, and while it contains a lot of extreme rhetoric, I think it’s also important to see the kinds of opinions Breitbart has allegedly solicited from some corporate executives, like the Intel VP who insisted that Gamergate is “‘doing great work.'” I’m definitely starting to agree with the arguments being made that this is part of the new culture wars, but I think we also need to recognize that it’s all of a piece with anti-choice initiatives, persistent discrimination against women and minorities in the workplace, and other mainstream expressions of misogyny and fear of women and gender (and racial) equality.
How do I know? Because I’ve spent the last fortnight quietly soliciting the opinions not only of senior executives at AAA video game publishers, but also at some of the companies linked to GamerGate’s boycotts and activism, such as Intel, Mercedes and BMW.
Perhaps it won’t surprise you to learn that microchip manufacturers and car companies are pretty sympathetic to the concerns of male consumers. But some of the things said to me–all, sadly, on condition of anonymity–have been nothing short of remarkable. . . .
Then consider the product manager, who was happy to be identified as “senior management at a German car manufacturer”, who told me that, “the violence against women is unacceptable and we cannot support it, but we will not financially support people who insult our customers either”. –Breitbart
Bygones – A poignant exchange of letters between former Kentucky slave Henry Bibb, who later became a Canadian abolitionist, and his “former master,” William Gatewood. After one of Bibb’s pamphlets made it into the hands of Gatewood, the Kentucky plantation owner sent a letter to Bibb, providing news of the farm in a casually gossipy way, imparting news like “your mother is still living here and she is well” and “George is sold.” To which Bibb responds with a letter possessed of such intelligent and clever dignity that I couldn’t help but contrast it to the obscene Economist review complaining that Edward Baptist overstated the horrors of slavery.
You wish to be remembered to King and Jack. I am pleased, sir, to inform you that they are both here, well, and doing well. They are both living in Canada West. They are now the owners of better farms than the men are who once owned them.
You may perhaps think hard of us for running away from slavery, but as to myself, I have but one apology to make for it, which is this: I have only to regret that I did not start at an earlier period. I might have been free long before I was. But you had it in your power to have kept me there much longer than you did. I think it is very probable that I should have been a toiling slave on your plantation today, if you had treated me differently. –Futility Closet