Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

How many quarters after Q1 2016 till Marissa Mayer is unemployed?
	1 or fewer
	2
	4
	Her job is guaranteed; what are you even talking about?

Boris Galerkin: Dec 17, 2011; I don't understand why I can't harass people online. Seriously, somebody please explain why I shouldn't be allowed to stalk others on social media!

Vegetable posted:

I don�t think anyone here who has looked at the code has said it�s suppression.

The only thing I can see is from this post:

Mega Comrade posted:

I'll be totally honest, I barely looked at it. Thought it was funny, posted it. Didn't realise it would get such a reaction. Looking at the full code in more detail it still 'looks' like it's supressing Ukraine topics but Scala isn't a language I know so I could be wrong.

Twitter GitHub posted:
SafetyLabelType

Describes a particular policy violation for a given noun instance, and usually leads to reduced visibility of the labeled entity in product surfaces. There are many deprecated, and experimental safety label types. Labels with these safety label types have no effect on VF. Additionally, some safety label types are not used, and not designed for VF.

The OP though isn't some rando day 1 expert, he's a well known cyber security expert, reading others peoples code and figuring out what it is doing is his daily job, so yes, I did take his judgement at face value.

So the code documentation says that these SafetyLabels are used for only Twitter Spaces, which I think are live streams, not tweets. The documentation also says it has no effect on VF, which I think refers to "visibility factor". I'm sure Twitter has specific terms/meanings for what visibility vs. VF means and I don't know that difference.

Here's an example of why you'd want a separate Ukraine category instead of lumping it with generic stuff: if the default for generic nsfw war stuff is "nuke this from orbit" you can specifically set the Ukraine category to be "do nothing special", for example.

# ? Apr 3, 2023 19:30

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 7, 2024 17:44

laserghost: Feb 12, 2014; ^{trust me, I'm a cat.}

https://twitter.com/dogecoin/status/1642956201787793419

The Twitter logo has been turned into Doge, to promote the crypto.

https://decrypt.co/125299/dogecoin-surges-doge-replaces-bird-logo-twitter

# ? Apr 3, 2023 19:37

LASER BEAM DREAM: Nov 3, 2005; Oh, what? So now I suppose you're just going to sit there and pout?

How long do you get to gently caress with the SEC until they do something about it? Is it never?

# ? Apr 3, 2023 19:40

Boris Galerkin: Dec 17, 2011; I don't understand why I can't harass people online. Seriously, somebody please explain why I shouldn't be allowed to stalk others on social media!

LASER BEAM DREAM posted:

How long do you get to gently caress with the SEC until they do something about it? Is it never?

What can the SEC do about a company changing the logo on it's website?

# ? Apr 3, 2023 19:46

Elias_Maluco: Aug 23, 2007; I need to sleep

My grandfather died of tuberculosis and thats why Im betting heavily on snake oil despite

https://twitter.com/Forbes/status/1642756330023682053

# ? Apr 3, 2023 19:54

withak: Jan 15, 2003; Fun Shoe

Unseizable for technical crypto reasons or unseizable because no one would bother to seize something worthless.

# ? Apr 3, 2023 19:58

OddObserver: Apr 3, 2009

LASER BEAM DREAM posted:

How long do you get to gently caress with the SEC until they do something about it? Is it never?

Last time the SEC tried to do something IIRC the courts gave him some sort of "you have to be a total moron to pay attention to what he says so it does not count" immunity from SEC

# ? Apr 3, 2023 20:05

Vegetable: Oct 22, 2010

Elias_Maluco posted:

My grandfather died of tuberculosis and thats why Im betting heavily on snake oil despite

https://twitter.com/Forbes/status/1642756330023682053

I can�t believe this is a real tweet. This is god-level satire.

# ? Apr 3, 2023 20:17

AceOfFlames: Oct 9, 2012

Vegetable posted:

I can�t believe this is a real tweet. This is god-level satire.

Especially given how in that picture the dude looks EXACTLY like Russ Hanneman.

# ? Apr 3, 2023 20:58

Mister Facetious: Apr 21, 2007; I think I died and woke up in L.A.,
I don't know how I wound up in this place...

LASER BEAM DREAM posted:

How long do you get to gently caress with the SEC until they do something about it?

If Bernie Madoff was any indication, it's "until they turn themselves in".

# ? Apr 3, 2023 21:10

laserghost: Feb 12, 2014; ^{trust me, I'm a cat.}

Well...

https://twitter.com/mopdrive/status/1642957866276364309

# ? Apr 3, 2023 21:21

OddObserver: Apr 3, 2009

laserghost posted:

Well...

https://twitter.com/mopdrive/status/1642957866276364309

I am not sure that the supposed size of lawsuit is worth attention, but changing Twitter icon to dogecoin while being sued about dogecoin seems like the sort of thing a lawyer would recommend against.

# ? Apr 3, 2023 21:45

Blut: Sep 11, 2009; if someone is in the bottom 10%~ of a guillotine

OddObserver posted:

I am not sure that the supposed size of lawsuit is worth attention, but changing Twitter icon to dogecoin while being sued about dogecoin seems like the sort of thing a lawyer would recommend against.

Maybe Elon recently watched the 1999 film Double Jeopardy and now thinks he can't be in trouble twice for doing the same thing. That would seem pretty on brand.

# ? Apr 3, 2023 21:53

TACD: Oct 27, 2000

OddObserver posted:

I am not sure that the supposed size of lawsuit is worth attention, but changing Twitter icon to dogecoin while being sued about dogecoin seems like the sort of thing a lawyer would recommend against.

🤣🤣🤣

# ? Apr 3, 2023 22:27

LASER BEAM DREAM: Nov 3, 2005; Oh, what? So now I suppose you're just going to sit there and pout?

Blut posted:

Maybe Elon recently watched the 1999 film Double Jeopardy and now thinks he can't be in trouble twice for doing the same thing. That would seem pretty on brand.

https://i.imgur.com/qIsLv9p.mp4

# ? Apr 3, 2023 22:52

shimmy shimmy: Nov 13, 2020

Absurd Alhazred posted:

A breakdown of the code and what it means was posted in the Social Media Companies thread:

pumpinglemma posted:

Come on dude, there is literally an NSFW violence category that would neatly apply to everything NSFW about the war pictured in that code snippet. This is also not just speculation - the full code is literally public and that tweet thread is a cybersecurity expert talking about it with full context. We also now have two goons itt who have looked at, again, the actual full code - not tweets of snippets - and reckon it looks like suppression rather than NSFWing as well. Please either look at the code yourself and come back with actual evidence, or do some googling and find some experts who disagree, or stop meeting effort with low-effort.

Just to follow up on this since we're quoting posts from a different thread, this guy isn't a cybersecurity expert.

Main Paineframe posted:

That's all very nice and good, but with one important problem: it's not very accurate! A couple of his tweets clearly contradict what's shown in the code snippets he's using as his sources, and looking into the repository for the actual context surrounding those code snippets suggests that his other tweets are inaccurate as well.

Which shouldn't be shocking if you look past the authoritative-sounding tweets and look at the actual source! Aakash Gupta is a MBA who's spent his entire career in marketing and management. He likes to tout his days in code camp and his management positions in tech companies to portray himself as a technology expert, but he builds that image solely to drive people to his paid Substack where he claims to dispense expert marketing advice around whatever the current hot tech buzzword is. And for the most part, he's just collecting info from other dubious tweets that have been circulating around, and compiling them into a single thread - he just takes other people's screenshots and paraphrases their tweets. He cites his actual sources later in the thread, and half of them are cryptobros; all this info is actually coming from the likes of @NFT_GOD and @xerocooleth.

Just because a tweet seems detailed doesn't mean it's a good source.

He points to lots of variables with detailed names...but the repositories often don't contain any code that actually uses those variables, so their actual impact is completely unknowable. And even with just this much, there's places where he appears to misinterpret the code. For example:
https://twitter.com/aakashg0/status/1641976906982498310

He says here that external links get you marked as spam unless you have enough engagement. Which is a takeaway one might have if they only read the comments and none of the actual code. The actual code describes a much more complicated logic, with at least four different conditions that go into the decision of whether or not a link is marked as "SPAM_SCORE" or "NOT_SPAM_SCORE". And if you go into the repository and look at the complete class, you can see the value of "ENGAGEMENTS_NO_FILTER", which tells you that the amount of engagements needed to clear the reputation check is a whopping 1.

Similarly, I can't find anything that backs up his assertion that Ukraine content is downranked. The screenshot he shows only demonstrates that Ukraine Crisis content is assigned a category in "SpaceSafetyLabelType", but he doesn't actually demonstrate that this reduces the content's reach. Digging through the repository, I'm actually fairly confident that it doesn't. Yes, a lot of the other SpaceSafetyLabelType items are clearly the kind of stuff you'd expect to be downranked or filtered...but I can dig through the files and find exactly where about half of them are downranked, which happens in other files. "DMCAWithheld" gets handled specially in Action.scala, for instance, while "DoNotAmplify" has half a dozen entries in various Rules files. The Ukraine stuff doesn't have such an entry.

In fact, the only other place Ukraine is mentioned at all in the repository is in PublicInterestSafetyRules, where Ukraine-related misinformation is clearly singled out.

And the "MisinfoCrisis" policy reason listed here does get cited as a reason for downranking and policy violations elsewhere in the repository.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 00:16

Boris Galerkin: Dec 17, 2011; I don't understand why I can't harass people online. Seriously, somebody please explain why I shouldn't be allowed to stalk others on social media!

For something more fun/funny, someone got access to Photoshop�s new AI image generator and it�s bad. Very bad.

The left picture in these tweets are from Adobe, right from MidJourney.

It basically doesn�t know much about copyrighted characters because it wasn�t trained on them:

Deadpool and Mario:
https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1642921478072209409

It�s also really bad at drawing random people too:
https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1642921482564108293

To be fair, Adobe is trying to �do the right thing� in regards to training data though. AFAIK it uses only images that it has properly licensed, although IIRC there was also a fiasco about Creative Cloud having a thing where your art was automatically opted in to Adobe�s training data.

Boris Galerkin fucked around with this message at 13:33 on Apr 4, 2023

# ? Apr 4, 2023 13:25

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

I don�t see the point in the message when everyone knows adobe is trying to not create images of copyrighted characters and it�s model is trained on its own stock images.

Like that�s actually a good thing.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 13:44

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Italy became the first western country in the world to ban ChatGPT.

quote:

Italy became the first Western country to ban ChatGPT. Here�s what other countries are doing

Italy has become the first country in the West to ban ChatGPT, the popular artificial intelligence chatbot from U.S. startup OpenAI.

Last week, the Italian Data Protection Watchdog ordered OpenAI to temporarily cease processing Italian users� data amid a probe into a suspected breach of Europe�s strict privacy regulations.

The regulator, which is also known as Garante, cited a data breach at OpenAI which allowed users to view the titles of conversations other users were having with the chatbot.

There �appears to be no legal basis underpinning the massive collection and processing of personal data in order to �train� the algorithms on which the platform relies,� Garante said in a statement Friday.

Garante also flagged worries over a lack of age restrictions on ChatGPT, and how the chatbot can serve factually incorrect information in its responses.

OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft
, risks facing a fine of 20 million euros ($21.8 million), or 4% of its global annual revenue, if it doesn�t come up with remedies to the situation in 20 days.

Italy isn�t the only country reckoning with the rapid pace of AI progression and its implications for society. Other governments are coming up with their own rules for AI, which, whether or not they mention generative AI, will undoubtedly touch on it. Generative AI refers to a set of AI technologies that generate new content based on prompts from users. It is more advanced than previous iterations of AI, thanks in no small part to new large language models, which are trained on vast quantities of data.

There have long been calls for AI to face regulation. But the pace at which the technology has progressed is such that it is proving difficult for governments to keep up. Computers can now create realistic art, write entire essays, or even generate lines of code, in a matter of seconds.

�We have got to be very careful that we don�t create a world where humans are somehow subservient to a greater machine future,� Sophie Hackford, a futurist and global technology innovation advisor for American farming equipment maker John Deere, told CNBC�s �Squawk Box Europe� Monday.

�Technology is here to serve us. it�s there to make our cancer diagnosis quicker or make humans not have to do jobs that we don�t want to do.�

�We need to be thinking about it very carefully now, and we need to be acting on that now, from a regulation perspective,� she added.

Various regulators are concerned by the challenges AI poses for job security, data privacy, and equality. There are also worries about advanced AI manipulating political discourse through generation of false information.

Many governments are also starting to think about how to deal with general purpose systems such as ChatGPT, with some even considering joining Italy in banning the technology.

Britain
Last week, the U.K. announced plans for regulating AI. Rather than establish new regulations, the government asked regulators in different sectors to apply existing regulations to AI.

The U.K. proposals, which don�t mention ChatGPT by name, outline some key principles for companies to follow when using AI in their products, including safety, transparency, fairness, accountability, and contestability.

Britain is not at this stage proposing restrictions on ChatGPT, or any kind of AI for that matter. Instead, it wants to ensure companies are developing and using AI tools responsibly and giving users enough information about how and why certain decisions are taken.

In a speech to Parliament last Wednesday, Digital Minister Michelle Donelan said the sudden popularity of generative AI showed that risks and opportunities surrounding the technology are �emerging at an extraordinary pace.�

By taking a non-statutory approach, the government will be able to �respond quickly to advances in AI and to intervene further if necessary,� she added.

Dan Holmes, a fraud prevention leader at Feedzai, which uses AI to combat financial crime, said the main priority of the U.K.�s approach was addressing �what good AI usage looks like.�

�It�s more, if you�re using AI, these are the principles you should be thinking about,� Holmes told CNBC. �And it often boils down to two things, which is transparency and fairness.�

The EU
The rest of Europe is expected to take a far more restrictive stance on AI than its British counterparts, which have been increasingly diverging from EU digital laws following the U.K.�s withdrawal from the bloc.

The European Union, which is often at the forefront when it comes to tech regulation, has proposed a groundbreaking piece of legislation on AI.

Known as the European AI Act, the rules will heavily restrict the use of AI in critical infrastructure, education, law enforcement, and the judicial system.

It will work in conjunction with the EU�s General Data Protection Regulation. These rules regulate how companies can process and store personal data.

When the AI act was first dreamed up, officials hadn�t accounted for the breakneck progress of AI systems capable of generating impressive art, stories, jokes, poems and songs.

According to Reuters, the EU�s draft rules consider ChatGPT to be a form of general purpose AI used in high-risk applications. High-risk AI systems are defined by the commission as those that could affect people�s fundamental rights or safety.

They would face measures including tough risk assessments and a requirement to stamp out discrimination arising from the datasets feeding algorithms.

�The EU has a great, deep pocket of expertise in AI. They�ve got access to some of the top notch talent in the world, and it�s not a new conversation for them,� Max Heinemeyer, chief product officer of Darktrace, told CNBC.

�It�s worthwhile trusting them to have the best of the member states at heart and fully aware of the potential competitive advantages that these technologies could bring versus the risks.�

But while Brussels hashes out laws for AI, some EU countries are already looking at Italy�s actions on ChatGPT and debating whether to follow suit.

�In principle, a similar procedure is also possible in Germany,� Ulrich Kelber, Germany�s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, told the Handelsblatt newspaper.

The French and Irish privacy regulators have contacted their counterparts in Italy to learn more about its findings, Reuters reported. Sweden�s data protection authority ruled out a ban. Italy is able to move ahead with such action as OpenAI doesn�t have a single office in the EU.

Ireland is typically the most active regulator when it comes to data privacy since most U.S. tech giants like Meta
and Google
have their offices there.

U.S.
The U.S. hasn�t yet proposed any formal rules to bring oversight to AI technology.

The country�s National Institute of Science and Technology put out a national framework that gives companies using, designing or deploying AI systems guidance on managing risks and potential harms.

But it runs on a voluntary basis, meaning firms would face no consequences for not meeting the rules.

So far, there�s been no word of any action being taken to limit ChatGPT in the U.S.

Last month, the Federal Trade Commission received a complaint from a nonprofit research group alleging GPT-4, OpenAI�s latest large language model, is �biased, deceptive, and a risk to privacy and public safety� and violates the agency�s AI guidelines.

The complaint could lead to an investigation into OpenAI and suspension of commercial deployment of its large language models. The FTC declined to comment.

China

ChatGPT isn�t available in China, nor in various countries with heavy internet censorship like North Korea, Iran and Russia. It is not officially blocked, but OpenAI doesn�t allow users in the country to sign up.

Several large tech companies in China are developing alternatives. Baidu, Alibaba and JD.com, some of China�s biggest tech firms, have announced plans for ChatGPT rivals.

China has been keen to ensure its technology giants are developing products in line with its strict regulations.

Last month, Beijing introduced first-of-its-kind regulation on so-called deepfakes, synthetically generated or altered images, videos or text made using AI.

Chinese regulators previously introduced rules governing the way companies operate recommendation algorithms. One of the requirements is that companies must file details of their algorithms with the cyberspace regulator.

Such regulations could in theory apply to any kind of ChatGPT-style of technology.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/italy-has-banned-chatgpt-heres-what-other-countries-are-doing.html

# ? Apr 4, 2023 13:45

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Machine learning is fundmentally about the quality and quantity of your training data. If you train it on less because you're actually trying to respect copyright, then I'm not surprised the model is worse.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 13:48

Ruffian Price: Sep 17, 2016

Adobe will show you multiple messages to that effect before you get to the generating part, but I'm not surprised the Funko-addled techlord simply went "skip, skip, skip, uhhh Marvel??"

# ? Apr 4, 2023 14:03

Mega Comrade: Apr 22, 2004; Listen buddy, we all got problems!

The Dave posted:

I don’t see the point in the message when everyone knows adobe is trying to not create images of copyrighted characters and it’s model is trained on its own stock images.

Like that’s actually a good thing.

Yeah it does seem like an odd criticism and weird to call it bad. It's not trained on copyrighted stuff so of course it can't recreate copyrighted characters. As for the crowded street scene, it's a new system being compared to ones that's been on the market for almost a year and has a larger training set :shrug:

Adobe will need to catch up though if they want to stay relevant, unless lawsuits from Disney just bankrupt the other players first.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Italy became the first western country in the world to ban ChatGPT.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/italy-has-banned-chatgpt-heres-what-other-countries-are-doing.html

isn't something I'd considered before this ban. But how will these training sets pass current GDPR rules? If it's scanned my Facebook profile, can I ask OpenAI to remove it from the dataset? Will they even be able to tell if it's in there?

Mega Comrade fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Apr 4, 2023

# ? Apr 4, 2023 14:10

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

Nothingtoseehere posted:

Machine learning is fundmentally about the quality and quantity of your training data. If you train it on less because you're actually trying to respect copyright, then I'm not surprised the model is worse.

It's not even the only reason the Firefly images are coming out worse. The prompts were also specifically crafted and optimized for Midjourney, and just thrown blindly into Firefly (which is still in an early beta stage!) with only some weak token attempts to tweak them accordingly.

https://twitter.com/DrJimFan/status/1642921495289802753

# ? Apr 4, 2023 14:17

OddObserver: Apr 3, 2009

There is something amusingly (in)appropriate in comparing AIs via prompts that were trained on one of them.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 14:26

Inspector Gesicht: Oct 26, 2012; 500 Zeus a body.

Amazon is shutting down the Book Depository. You have three weeks to order poo poo before eating poo poo.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 15:43

Boris Galerkin: Dec 17, 2011; I don't understand why I can't harass people online. Seriously, somebody please explain why I shouldn't be allowed to stalk others on social media!

Inspector Gesicht posted:

Amazon is shutting down the Book Depository. You have three weeks to order poo poo before eating poo poo.

The what?

# ? Apr 4, 2023 15:51

cat botherer: Jan 6, 2022; I am interested in most phases of data processing.

Inspector Gesicht posted:

Amazon is shutting down the Book Depository. You have three weeks to order poo poo before eating poo poo.

Hmm, sounds like a bad shoot.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 16:07

Family Values: Jun 26, 2007

Mega Comrade posted:

Yeah it does seem like an odd criticism and weird to call it bad. It's not trained on copyrighted stuff so of course it can't recreate copyrighted characters. As for the crowded street scene, it's a new system being compared to ones that's been on the market for almost a year and has a larger training set

Adobe will need to catch up though if they want to stay relevant, unless lawsuits from Disney just bankrupt the other players first.

On the other hand, using tools that won't get you sued and/or all of your work denied copyright has a certain appeal of its own if you're a working artist instead of a click whore on social media.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 16:29

Mister Facetious: Apr 21, 2007; I think I died and woke up in L.A.,
I don't know how I wound up in this place...

Inspector Gesicht posted:

Amazon is shutting down the Book Depository. You have three weeks to order poo poo before eating poo poo.

What is/was this

# ? Apr 4, 2023 17:08

Ruffian Price: Sep 17, 2016

Amazon, selling books?!

# ? Apr 4, 2023 17:10

Vegetable: Oct 22, 2010

Book Depository was extremely cool poo poo back in the day. Unfortunately I haven�t bought a book in like 10 years and if I do I�d probably buy from a local bookstore instead.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 17:15

LASER BEAM DREAM: Nov 3, 2005; Oh, what? So now I suppose you're just going to sit there and pout?

I stopped buying books from Amazon last year because they seem unable to ship them without damage. I returned 3 copies of an expensive book until I finally accepted one with a single hosed up corner and swore never again.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 17:30

Blue Footed Booby: Oct 4, 2006; got those happy feet

LASER BEAM DREAM posted:

I stopped buying books from Amazon last year because they seem unable to ship them without damage. I returned 3 copies of an expensive book until I finally accepted one with a single hosed up corner and swore never again.

Same. They regularly just chuck paperbacks into bubble wrap envelopes, or into cavernous boxes. Even videogames regularly arrive with damage to the case.

Yet ebay sellers can consistently get comic books to me safely with just a couple pieces of cardboard and some packing tape.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 17:42

Mister Facetious: Apr 21, 2007; I think I died and woke up in L.A.,
I don't know how I wound up in this place...

LASER BEAM DREAM posted:

I stopped buying books from Amazon last year because they seem unable to ship them without damage. I returned 3 copies of an expensive book until I finally accepted one with a single hosed up corner and swore never again.

My copy of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collection (with the original art) had a tear dead center on the top of the cover.

Never buying a book from Amazon again.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 17:44

Professor Beetus: Apr 12, 2007; They can fight us
But they'll never Beetus

So is someone actually going to explain what the Amazon book depository is? Don't tell me to google it, google sucks poo poo now

e: like is it just their warehouses full of books because books aren't really their big deal anymore?

# ? Apr 4, 2023 17:55

Boba Pearl: Dec 27, 2019; by Athanatos

Professor Beetus posted:

So is someone actually going to explain what the Amazon book depository is? Don't tell me to google it, google sucks poo poo now

e: like is it just their warehouses full of books because books aren't really their big deal anymore?

The online shop Book Depository is due to close at the end of April, vendors and publishing partners have been told. This comes after the bookseller�s parent company Amazon announced it had decided to �eliminate� a number of positions across its Devices and Books businesses.

The Gloucester-based bookseller was founded in 2004 by Stuart Felton and Andrew Crawford, a former Amazon employee, with the mantra of �selling �less of more� rather than �more of less��. It aimed to sell 6m titles covering a wide variety of genres and topics, as opposed to focusing solely on bestsellers. While originally a rival to Amazon, it was acquired by the retail giant in 2011, causing some in the publishing industry to worry about the tightening of the American company�s �stranglehold� on the UK book trade.

According to the trade magazine the Bookseller, an email sent out to vendors and publishing partners explained that Book Depository will be closing, and that the last date customers will be able to place orders is 26 April. �Over the coming weeks we will complete a winding down of the business, including discontinuing our listings as a marketplace seller and closing our website,� Andy Chart, head of vendor management, wrote.

�I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you, from everyone at Book Depository and our book-loving customers, for your supportive partnership over the years in helping us to make printed books more accessible to readers around the world,� he concluded.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 17:58

Professor Beetus: Apr 12, 2007; They can fight us
But they'll never Beetus

Boba Pearl posted:

The online shop Book Depository is due to close at the end of April, vendors and publishing partners have been told. This comes after the bookseller�s parent company Amazon announced it had decided to �eliminate� a number of positions across its Devices and Books businesses.

The Gloucester-based bookseller was founded in 2004 by Stuart Felton and Andrew Crawford, a former Amazon employee, with the mantra of �selling �less of more� rather than �more of less��. It aimed to sell 6m titles covering a wide variety of genres and topics, as opposed to focusing solely on bestsellers. While originally a rival to Amazon, it was acquired by the retail giant in 2011, causing some in the publishing industry to worry about the tightening of the American company�s �stranglehold� on the UK book trade.

According to the trade magazine the Bookseller, an email sent out to vendors and publishing partners explained that Book Depository will be closing, and that the last date customers will be able to place orders is 26 April. �Over the coming weeks we will complete a winding down of the business, including discontinuing our listings as a marketplace seller and closing our website,� Andy Chart, head of vendor management, wrote.

�I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you, from everyone at Book Depository and our book-loving customers, for your supportive partnership over the years in helping us to make printed books more accessible to readers around the world,� he concluded.

Oh okay so it was another book seller that got bought out by Amazon. Surprised it took this long to close their doors in that case.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 18:03

Boba Pearl: Dec 27, 2019; by Athanatos

idk I just copy pasted the first result on google.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 18:06

Baronash: Feb 29, 2012; So what do you want to be called?

I never used them, but it looks like they offered books in different languages that would typically only be available regionally and coupled that with free worldwide shipping. I imagine that�s a hell of a deal for expats or anyone else looking for international editions at reasonable prices.

# ? Apr 4, 2023 19:20

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 7, 2024 17:44

Mr. Nemo: Feb 4, 2016; I wish I had a sister like my big strong Daddy

Lol all the americans outing themselves

Book depository ruled for internationals, way better than amazon or other options, this sucks

# ? Apr 4, 2023 19:24

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

«‹›1517 »