Link Smorgasbord, September 2 - 8

RIP Frederik Pohl, the man who transformed Science Fiction
Definitely a landmark author

The Plan is Obsolescence - Defining our Machine Wrought Maladies
Built in obsolescence isn't limited to just fancy high tech gadgets, but is something that has bothered me for as long as I can remember.

mooculus
Ohio State is trying the MOOC learning platform whole hog with this calculus offering, including free textbook.

Amazon Kindle MatchBook bundles ebooks with print purchases
Hey, something Amazon is doing that I like.  Of course, they'll get all the credit for something that a UK publisher has been doing for a year now (except Angry Robot doesn't charge for the ebook copy).

Clonefiles
Totally linked twice here, but I have also been highly impressed with the titles that I have read by Angry Robot, so they're getting extra love from me.  If you like science fiction and fantasy I seriously recommend checking out Angry Robot's title list.

Ministry of Sound sues Spotify
Because user created play lists match compilation album track lists.  This is under UK law so I'm not sure how it will turn out, but under US Copyright Law lists are not copyrightable (deciding suit involved phone books).

Tiny $45 cubic mini-PC runs Android and Linux
I've been trying to keep an eye on these extremely low cost mini platforms, as should I have the time and/or space I have some neat projects that I could use a few for.

How to have the best literary wedding ever (Buzzfeed)
This.  All of this.

Epic Privacy Browser
I am intrigued and may be playing around with this later.  Downside is that it has the layout of Chrome and I like the Firefox interface more.

PayPal Freezes MailPile's Account
I mentioned Mailpile before as I definitely liked and was intrigued by the idea.  At that time they had a crowd-sourcing campaign going, and they met their goals... only to run into shenanigans.  Hopefully it gets resolved without too much hassle.

I hired a book
About  really needing to look at the product you're trying to sell, and why someone would want it.

Welcome to the end of secrecy
Interesting article.

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