Non-energy uses of fossil fuels are not problematic from the point of greenhouse emissions.

If we stop burning fossil fuels and get energy from renewable sources, the remaining hydrocarbons will probably be used for plastics, chemicals and so on. If they aren't burnt this is fine.

It also probably makes more sense to use fossil fuels for applications where density is critical such as aviation, offset with carbon capture, rather than to leave oil in the ground and synthesize jet fuel using renewable energy.

But making plastics using renewable energy and fossil hydrocarbons for feedstock does not exacerbate the greenhouse effect, unless you burn them when you've finished with them.

Arguably plastics are a stable, cheap and useful carbon sink and if climate is the overriding ecological priority we should be making as many as we can and recycling as few as possible.

To be pedantic: I think the actual story is about V1 drones. They did not have a navigation system as such, they were just aimed in a certain direction and with the right amount of fuel to fall out of the sky over the target.

The British noticed that V1s aimed at London tended to fall a little short. This would have been to the South and East of London since that's the direction they were coming from. They reported more hits on the North West of the city, expecting correctly that Nazi spies in Britain would let the Luftwaffe know about this.

So the range was decremented further, meaning even more hits on the southern and eastern suburbs, but statistically fewer people killed and buildings destroyed as the mean moved to less populated areas.

Are you claiming that advertising doesn't increase the total gambling spend?

No - it clearly does. But I’m saying look at where the advertising money is going to understand why it’s going to be hard to ban it.

Agreed, the article author is just gatekeeping as far as I'm concerned.

Most books available on PoD wouldn't be available at all without it. Not just less well known reissues but also new interesting books with limited readership, and books which larger publishers would ignore because of their own prejudices.

There are more luxury editions of classics than ever so quality-sensitive book collectors are still being catered for. And it's easier than ever to find secondhand copies of old books.

It's usually extremely prominent if the book is an India only edition.

For sure, if both Amazon and the seller are doing things the way they are supposed to be. There is a small chance, however, if the OP either purchases from an unfaithful third party seller, or somehow inadvertently from a third party seller even though they purchased from Amazon.com, due to how inventory is mixed (Amazon kept doing this for years).

I mean, it will be very obvious from the physical book itself.

Most of these are also available in ebook (free ebooks, in the case of public domain works like the Bertrand Russell), which makes me think that the people who don't value paper books in-and-of-themselves probably aren't buying the shoddy paperbacks either.

For someone who specifically likes the experience of a paper books, the option of a better print (or at least disclosure of the print quality) is highly desirable

My comment and the part of the previous comment I was replying to are explicitly about works in copyright.

For public domain works, poor quality printed copies could never be criticized as crowding out better quality copies.

Sure. I'm not arguing it's fundamentally bad. But it's going to leave some buyers unhappy because nowadays, the point of paperbacks is that you're paying extra for a reading experience, not the text itself. An ebook is always less (or free).

If you order from your local bookstore a book which is being sold on Amazon as a PoD copy by a major publisher, what do you think happens?

They don't have a separate manufacturing process for mom-and-pop bookstores. Amazon do the printing and the logistics but deliver the book to the store instead of to your house so that the store can hand it to you and collect a very small amount of money.

> If you order from your local bookstore a book which is being sold on Amazon as a PoD copy by a major publisher, what do you think happens?

Nothing. Local bookstores (not just 'mom-and-pop', but national chains or cooperatives) would tend not to have that title available. Is that a US thing that they would order from Amazon? Printing-on-demand is potentially interesting, but just not a thing for most titles.

I disagree.

The bookshop would order the book from the distributor, who would get a copy ultimately from Amazon.

The books printed-on-demand by Amazon and sold directly by them are also sold via the traditional supply chain.

biblio.org is a good alternative where I am (although personally I don't see the problem with having either the print-on-demand books or buying used from Amazon as an option).

sqlite is an extreme outlier not a typical example, with regard to test suite size and coverage.