I'm not sure I 100% understand this (but then it was Dr. Feynman who said that if you think you understand quantum mechanics then you don't)... but I read this 2002 paper by MS research that gives a method of transforming biprime factorization into an optimization problem. Optimization problems are exactly what D-Wave's quantum annealing machine can do (very well)... so doesn't this kind of break RSA? Can somebody point me to the place where I can learn that I'm wrong and can start trusting RSA PKI again?

The process right now for entrepreneurs coming to the US is reasonably straight forward, but still requires a fair amount of paperwork. I'm a Canadian entrepreneur who recently moved to the Bay Area to work on my startup and I'm in the US on an L-1A VISA. The process wasn't too hard, but it was still about about 3 weeks worth of preparing documentation for US Immigration. I documented the entire process of getting an L-1A VISA here: https://www.startupgrind.com/b...

Also posted by Cory Doctorow over on Boing Boing.

I'm the submitter and one of Shelfie's co-founders. We were previously called "BitLit"... I'm putting on my flame proof underwear, since I know this is /. But I'm happy to answer any questions about print + digital bundling and the Springer deal.

Some books include a free / cheap digital copy: eg www.shelfie.com but that doesn't help with the art book problem.

Hmmm... I think this is a bug. I'll look into it. Sorry. It's early days, we'll get better. Thanks for letting me know about the bug!

You are correct. While Kindle Matchbook technically has about 84,000 titles in the program the cast majority are from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and were rolling into the program by Amazon using the contract they have with KDP authors which allows them to "change the terms of this agreement from time to time by providing you [N weeks] notice".
I have nothing against self published authors. I'd love to strike a deal with Lulu or any of the other big self publishing platforms that allow authors to produce both print and digital versions of their books (because of course we need a physical copy otherwise bundling doesn't really work).

What is interesting is that serialized writing has made a return e.g. Wattpad (and various clones)... are the modern incarnations of the newspapers that Charles Dickens would publish his novels in serial format.

Legally speaking in some countries e.g. Australia you are allowed (by those who make up laws) to format shift a paper book into an ebook. However, those same people who make up laws have determined that you actually have to doing the format shifting yourself in order for it to be considered legal. That is, you aren't allowed to download an ebook copy of a physical book you own. I'm an engineer and entrepreneur, so for now I'll donate to the EFF and let Cory Doctorow argue the finer points of the insanity we enjoy and call modern copyright law.

I met Elizabeth in the UK at a book conference just before the London Book Fair. She was super enthusiastic about the idea of bundling she literally marched me over to the Granta booth at the book fair and sat me down with her publisher and explained the idea and said (to her publisher) "do this now". Honestly it was a totally amazing experience to see an author so excited about what we're doing.
The only other author who's ever been so excited about doing this has been Joe Hill (Stephan King's son). Joe found out about what we were doing on twitter after he mentioned that he thought you should get the ebook free if you buy the hardcover. Somebody tweeted back at him and he download the app on the spot and used it on Ellen Datlow's Fearful Symetries which he happened to have in his pocket (at the time the odds of a randomly selected book working in BitLit were about 1 in 10,000... so we got lucky). He got pretty excited about the idea and twisted HarperCollins' arm into letting us give away a free ebook copy of Heart-Shaped Box to everybody who owned the print version. He also went on to say some nice things about what we're doing.

No we absolutely DO NOT request (or get) access to your address book. And we absolutely DO NOT send advertising emails to your contacts. I'll say that right now and for the record.

Thanks for the feedback on the Dragon's Den episode... I'll be honest, it was a very interesting edit on the part of the CBC. We filmed the episode back in March 2014 and it aired on Oct 15 2014... I was on the sound stage for almost 90 minutes with the dragons and that got cut down to about 7 minutes on air. There were also quite a few things that the dragons said which weren't taped during my segment -- that's one of the things you sign away in going on the show: the CBC can edit anything a dragon said in another person's segment into your segment... basically the CBC is there to make dramatic TV. So I'll leave it at what got shown on TV wasn't very indicative of what actually happened on the sound stage.