June 10, 2016 - The WAN Show Document

[LinusTech]

 

Soundcloud link:

 

Main News Topics

Microsoft to Acquire LinkedIn for more than $26 Billion

Source 1: http://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin-in-deal-value

Source 2: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/microsoft-linkedin-1.3632350

Source 3: http://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin/

• Stated in a press release on Monday

  • If deal is approved by regulators, LinkedIn will stay as an independent unit within Microsoft

  • LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner will remain CEO

• LinkedIn has more than 400 million members

• “The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world’s professionals,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in the press release

  • Nadella also stated “Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet”

• Transaction unanimously approved by the Board of Directors of both LinkedIn and Microsoft

• Transaction expected to close this calendar year

 

Facebook Will Start Tracking Which Stores You Walk Into

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/611910-faceboo OP: jos

Source 2: http://gizmodo.com/facebook-will-start-tracking-which-stores-you-

• Facebook wants to show advertisers that their ads make people visit brick-and-mortar stores

• Will use phones’ location services to track whether people actually walk into stores after seeing an ad

• Called the “Local Awareness” feature

  • Businesses can include a map with their ad to show users where the closest store is in case the user wants something immediately

• Advertising business won’t be able to see you individually, will be able to match visits with the number of people that saw their ad

• According to Adweek, early results from the feature have been good for businesses

  • French retailer E.Leclerc says it’s reached 1.5 million people within 10kms

    • 12% of clicks (180,000) led to a visit within a week

 

Smaller Chips May Depend on Vacuum Tube Technology

Source 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/technology/smaller-chips-may-depend-on-tec

Source 2: https://www.inverse.com/article/16574-future-phones-may-use-vacuum-tube-chip

• Silicon transistor is a tiny switch that is the building block of modern microelectronics

  • Replaced the vacuum tube in many consumer products in the 1970’s

• The vacuum tube may be on the verge of a comeback

• At stake is the future of “scaling”, ability to continue to shrink size of electronic circuits

  • Becoming harder to do as they become smaller and smaller

• Nanofabrication Group at Caltech is researching ultrasmall fabricated circuits that “function like vacuum tubes” as a candidate to replace the transistor

  • Research is being financed by Boeing

  • “Ultrasmall” means something to the effect of one millionth the size of old vacuum tubes

• Researchers also explored using vacuum tubes for flat-panel displays in the 1990s, though LCD technology ended up being both cheaper and more effective in that case

• The “Achilles’ heel” of modern transistors is that the smaller they get, the more they leak electrons

  • In modern chips as much as half the power consumed is lost to electrons leaking from transistors that are only dozens of atoms wide, wasting energy and generating heat

• These miniature vacuum tube switches use the mechanism that causes leakage in transistors (known as quantum tunneling) to switch on and off the flow of electrons without leakage

  • The result of this would be vacuum tube circuits that use less power and work faster than today’s transistor-based chips

• These tubes can be made from a range of conducting metals such as tungsten, molybdenum, gold, and platinum

  • This is an advantage because it significantly simplifies the tiny switches at the atomic scale

 

• Vacuum tubes are not the only candidate to replace the modern transistor

• Carbon nanotubes and even microscopic mechanical switches are also being evaluated at other institutions

• All in response to the limitations of silicon chips, currently sized between 10 and 20 nanometers on current generation chips

• Once the industry shrinks below 10 nanometers, silicon becomes a much more unpredictable material (emits light and becomes “remarkably elastic” at that size)

 

• Speculated that these types of specialty chips could be ready commercially before the end of the decade

 

Net Neutrality Wins, Again: AT&T Vows to Take it to the Supreme Court

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/611545-net-neutrality-wins- OP: CommandMan7

Source 2: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/14/the-fc

• Federal appeals court voted to uphold series of strict new rules for Internet providers

• Major victory in fight over net neutrality

• 2-1 court ruling Tuesday forces internet providers to obey federal regulations that ban the blocking or slowing of internet traffic to consumers

• Approved in a partisan vote last year, move by the FCC to reclassify internet providers opened them up to obligations never subjected to before

• The ruling comes months after AT&T and top cable associations sued the FCC

  • In hopes of overturning new rules put in place for internet providers

• Regulations from FCC also forbid carriers from speeding up websites that agree to pay providers a fee

  • Critics say could unfairly tilt commercial playing field against startups and innovators who can’t afford this

• Now the FCC has to decide how to implement many regulations it laid out in its net neutrality policy

 

Microsoft Makes Bold Move into Helping Serve the Marijuana Business

Source 1: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/06/17/microsoft-makes

• Microsoft welcoming marijuana compliance company Kind Financial onto its Azure Gov’t cloud platform

• Marking a first for the legal cannabis business

• Los Angeles-based Kind, provides seed-to-sale tracking solutions

  • Had been a commercial client of Microsoft’s Azure cloud since its 2014 debut

• After 9 months of talks with Microsoft officials, Kind CEO David Dinenberg got word his company would be promoted to “Azure Government”

  • Separate cloud platform whose security and compliance protocols are geared toward entities that interact with federal agencies

• Kimberly Nelson, executive director of Microsoft’s state and local gov’t solutions divison, said in a statement:

  • “"Kind agreed that Azure Government is the only cloud platform designed to meet government standards for the closely regulated cannabis compliance programs and we look forward to working together to help our government customers launch successful regulatory programs."

 

NERD SPORTS SHOUT OUT, LINK WILL BE IN THE VIDEO DESCRIPTION

Volleyball, Lacrosse, Dodgeball, Hockey & Curling are all available now - go check them out!

 

Rapid Fire

Internet Creators Guild

Source 1: https://medium.com/internet-creators-guild

Source 2: http://www.internetcreatorsguild.com/

Source 3: https://medium.com/internet-creators-guild/introducing-the-internet-creato

• “CREATION HAS FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED.”

• Opening up at the end of June

• “Membership organization for tens of thousands of people who now earn all or part of their living creating things on the internet”

• “ICG will be the first organization devoted to this new class of creator”

• “Membership will be as low as $5 per month”

Hank Green’s Post

 

Overwatch takes #1 spot from League of Legends in Korean PC bangs

Source 1: http://www.gametrics.com/

Source 2: https://twitter.com/ggDoA/status/743325191304949760 @ggDoA on Twitter

 

• Tweets from Korean LoL and general esports caster for OGN (OnGameNet), DoA

• League of Legends has been the most played game in Korean PC bangs (internet cafes) (pronounced “bongs”) for 203 weeks, almost four years

• Overwatch took that spot this week by 0.3% of total playtime country-wide

  • Very significant portion of Korean gamers play, at least partially, in PC Bangs

• Quote, again from DoA, on Reddit:

  • “I feel that it's too premature to make any sweeping statements about LoL or Overwatch's future. The PC Bang share stats are a big deal and a not so big deal at the same time. While it's true that other new games have cut into LoL's share before, none have made as big an impact as Overwatch has. This makes things interesting because of LoL's longevity as the king here. That said, LoL is still the king by a fairly large margin and it remains to be seen whether or not Overwatch really clicks with the esports fanbase in Korea. I personally think it already has, but time will tell how successful the game will be and my personal feelings shouldn't be the basis for any "the sky is falling" attitudes within the LoL community.”

• You can play for free in a lot of the PC bangs

 

OnePlus 3

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/611173-oneplus-3-launche OP: Trixanity

Source 2: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10419/oneplus-launches-the-oneplus-3

Specifications Chart

 

MSI and ASUS Send VGA Review Samples With Higher Clocks than Retail Cards

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/612041-msi-and-asus-se OP: HKZeroFive

Source 2: http://www.techpowerup.com/223440/msi-and-asus-send-vga-review-sa

TechPowerUp GPU-Z Scores

• TechPowerUp has been getting cards that are running at a higher software-defined clock speed profile than what consumers get out of the box

• Consumers have access to the higher clock speed profile too, only if they install a custom app that enables the profile

  • They feel this isn’t 100% representative of retail cards

• MSI’s factory-overclocked GTX 1080 Gaming X card comes with three software-defined profiles

  • Gaming Mode = What the card runs at out of the box

  • OC Mode = Factor

  • Silent Mode = Runs at reference clock speeds

• Review samples have been sent out, running at “OC Mode”

• While working with the GTX 1080, they looked back and see the practice has been going on for years with MSI

• ASUS looks like they’ve just adopted it

 

NVIDIA and AIB Partners Cut Prices of GTX 900 Series

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/612130-nvidia-cut-the- OP: balmung11

Source 2: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-900-series-price-cuts-2016/

• 980TI = Around $450 USD

• 980 = Around $379 USD

• 970 = Around $279 USD

Comparison Chart, Card Prices at Launch vs. Now

 

AT&T Hit with $100 Million Fine After Slowing Down its ‘Unlimited Data’

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/612417-att-just-got-hit- OP: jos

Source 2: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/06/17/att-just-got

• FCC has given AT&T a $100 million fine this Wednesday, accusing the country’s second largest cell carrier of slowing down internet speeds for customers who signed up for “unlimited” data plans

Federal Communications Commission Chart Visualizing the Problem

• FCC found when customers used up a certain amount of data, AT&T ‘throttled’ internet speeds to be much slower than normal

• AT&T says they will fight the fine

  • Fine is largest ever filed by the agency

 

Ubisoft CEO Open to a Merger - But Not With Vivendi

Source 1: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/13/ubisoft-ceo-open-to-a-merger-

Source 2: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1232945

• Yves Guillemot said he’s confident the French videogame publisher will be able to fend off a move by Vivendi

  • Exploring other options just in case they can’t

• “We have Plan A and Plan B,” said Guillemot

  • Plan A is to remain independent

  • Plan B is going with another group, either in the game industry, or with a tech or other type of company

• Those are the two options, and both are open

• Discussions are underway with potential investors, who would back the Guillemots in their battle with Vivendi, and potential partner companies

• If Vivendi gets control, Guillemot said he’d likely leave

  • Guillemot: "It's difficult to say today, but for sure my goal is to take care of that company if I have the capacity to make things happen," he says. "When you are part of a group that doesn't have the same strategies as you … I don't think it will be viable for me to stay."

 

Bluetooth 5.0 Promises More Speed, Greater Range

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/612266-bluetooth-50-is-here/ OP: Trixanity

Source 2: https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/16/bluetooth-5/

Source 3: http://www.cnet.com/news/new-version-of-bluetooth-to-be-faster-have-greater-range/

• Next major version change coming since 2009

• Expected to release late 2016 or early 2017

• Next version will quadruple range of connections

  • Will also double their speeds

  • No increase in power consumption

• Bluetooth 5 increases broadcasting capacity eight-fold

  • Data can be sent and received in a single interaction

• Mark Powell, executive director of Bluetooth SIG said in a statement:

  • “"And now with the ability to broadcast a much richer set of information, Bluetooth 5 will make beacon's, location awareness, and other connectionless services an even more relevant part of an effortless and seamless IoT experience."

 

Olli - 3D Printed, self-driving minibus, to hit the road in the US

Source 1: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-olli-3d-self-driving-minibus-road.html

Source 2: http://www.autoblog.com/2016/06/16/local-motors-olli-autonomous-shuttle/

Picture of Minibus

• In partnership with IBM’s supercomputer platform Watson

• Capable of carrying 12 passengers

• Unveiled by Arizona-based startup Local motors outside of of Washington, DC

• Will be demonstrated in National Harbor, Maryland

  • To happen over the next few months

  • Additional trials expected in Las Vegas and Miami

• Local Motors in talks to test vehicle in dozens of cities around the world

  • Including Berlin, Copenhagen, and Canberra

• While Google and other automakers see several years of testing before deploying autonomous cars

  • Local Motors co-founder and Chief Executive John Rogers said this vehicle is ready to go into service as soon as regulators allow it

  • “We hope to be able to print this vehicle in about 10 hours and assemble it in another hour,” Rogers said

• IBM isn’t driving the vehicle, but providing the user interface so passengers can have “conversations” with Olli

• Vehicle relies on more than 30 sensors and streams of data from IBM’s cloud

• Local Motors is about selling the vehicles to markets that are ready

Another Picture

 

Starbucks & Microsoft Released a free Starbucks plugin for Outlook and Outlook.com

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/609463-starbucks-is-goin OP: AluminumTech

Source 2: http://mspoweruser.com/starbucks-release-windows-phone-app-month/

• Available at the online Office Store as a free download

• Two main features:

1. Buy Starbucks eGiftcards to send to customers, friends, family, co-workers

• Picture

2. Can arrange meeting requests at your local Starbucks

• • • Picture

 

Facebook Rolls Out Suicide Prevention to Users Worldwide

Source 1: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/facebook-rolls-out-suicide-prevention-

Source 2: https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/14/facebook-suicide-prevention/

Source 3: https://www.facebook.com/fbsafety/photos/a.197686146935898.42079.125459124ve

• Facebook has updated its suicide prevention tools

  • Making them available worldwide

• Tools, allow people to flag posts from friends risk for self-harm or suicide

  • Previously only available for some English-language users

  • Others had to report through a form

• Users everywhere will soon be able to flag a friend’s post from a drop down menu if they are worried about self harm or suicide

• Posts are then reviewed by Facebook’s global community operations team

  • Who then may “reach out to this person with information that might be helpful to them”

• Information stated in an announcement by Facebook Safety on June 14th, 2016

 

Google Trolls Everyone with ‘Namey McNameface’ Easter egg in Android N Dev Preview 4

Source 1: http://www.androidauthority.com/android-n-easter-egg-698738/

Source 2: http://bgr.com/2016/06/15/android-n-nutella-name/

Source 3: http://www.androidauthority.com/android-n-developer-preview-4-698729/

• With the fourth Android N Developer Preview, users thought they may get a look at what Google plans on calling the next major version of Android

  • If you’re running the latest Dev Preview on your device, head over to Settings>About

  • Start tapping on “Android Version”

  • In previous builds, a big letter “N” would show up - PICTURE

  • After pressing on the “N”, you see a name pop up: Namey McNameface - PICTURE

• Callback to name referenced at Google I/O 2016

• Reference to the popular ship Boaty McBoatface

 

Sanford Wallace sentenced to Two and a Half years in Prison for Sending 27 Million Spam E-mails

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/611906-spam-king OP: jos
Source 2: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36538541

• Sanford Wallace, 47 years old has pleaded guilty to federal charges including fraud and criminal contempt

  • In connection with using electronic mail

• Also faces a fine of $310,000

• Messages sent to Facebook users in 2008 and 2009

• An FBI investigation resulted in Wallace’s prosecution after he turned himself in, in 2011

• “Wallace illegally obtained, stored, and exploited Facebook user account information and earned money by redirecting users to other websites,” a statement from the US Attorney’s Office said

 

Phil Spencer “We could have Released Xbox Codename Scorpio this year, but we want to make it better”

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/612026-phil-spencer-we OP: AluminumTech

Source 2: http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-considered-launching-upgraded-xbox

• Said in an interview at E3 2016, that the company seriously considered launching the new Xbox One with upgraded hardware this year, but decided against it

• Is instead launching a smaller version of the Xbox One console

  • The Xbox One S

• Focusing on 4K ready console to release next year

[adams]

interesting, as always

[RNGesusHatesMe]

39 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

Focusing on 4K ready console to release next year

yeah "4k " rip pc gamers Kappa

[Ronda]

Quote

If I'm gonna die, I'd like to it to be an ironic way.

If I'm gonna die

If

So you're saying there's an under embargo tech product that has made you think of death as not an inevitability?

[ahuckphin]

please still upload the video about how LinusMediaGroup make money and name it a fail episode. Sometimes it's good to showcase your failed videos 

[RNGesusHatesMe]

also please upload lukes WOW movie video i wanna see his opinion before i go watch it (was gonna wait till my exams finished)

[RZeroX]

26 minutes ago, RNGesusHatesMe said:

also please upload lukes WOW movie video i wanna see his opinion before i go watch it (was gonna wait till my exams finished)

https://www.twitch.tv/linustech/v/73047525

[minibois]

The whole "Is the stream pre recorded??" thing is now a meme. It's like turnip all over again and I hate it

[Hans Power]

BeQuiet PSUs are pretty shaky in my personnal experience. My old pure power was a complete mess and sometimes the PC wouldn't turn on after turning the power switch off and on. Then I send it in for replacement and got the same one back after more than a month with them stating that they couldn't find an error. So, no more BeQuiet PSUs for me anymore, ever.

[Sacredsock]

The youtube rabbit hole conversation at the 37minute mark or so is intriguing, would love to see the results of that. Reminds me of the Hitler game on wikipedia.

 

ps. the date in the title is wrong

[Darksworm]

@LinusTechHi.

About the idea mentioned here - 

(setting up a bunch of VMs with youtube autoplay running for a long time for scientific purposes)

Your idea was to screencapture all of the vms and (I'm guessing) later scrubbing through the footage to retrieve the data.

 

I was intrigued by this idea and would love to see the the results! I wanted to contribute so I created a google chrome extension that logs visited videos (their titles, urls the respective UTC timestamp of the visit) image -

 

You can copy this data over to excel or whatever - a lot less effort than going through hours of video footage and writing down the videos.

You can delete and export the logged data (from the extension button on Your chrome menu) image -

 

 

I've attached the unpacked extension (You can google how to load it in chrome) and here is the virus scan url - https://www.virustotal.com/lv/file/52e0bdc836ab12ecbf9003459afed4155c44824c4d8a4150f2c6f6bb6d5f870b/analysis/1466251147/

Luke can probably go over the code and vertify that there is nothing malicious going on.

 

I sure hope You stick to this idea and make it happen!

If You do, and want to use my creation, contact me if there's anything You would like changed or added.

 

P.S. If anyone wants to use this extension - go ahead

 

Can't wait to hear from you about this experiment!

~ Darksworm A.K.A. Deglis

YTUrlGrabber.zip

[evan_pyle]

To fix on the onmicrosoft.com mess you need to go into a users properties from the O365 admin center and change their email address (it might be something like user domain or UPN Suffix?), the onmicrosoft.com is the default for new accounts, if you are using active directory sync you can set the proxyAddress attribute and new users will automatically get the right address.

[alextulu]

About YouTube's sub box algorithm. I've never used it. I just bookmark the channels that I'm interested in.

[HalogeniC]

When it comes to the  youtube autoplay rabbithole idea, I think instead of just low quality footage being recorded it should just be super low framerate. That way, you can have it  basically be pictures with higher quality and still take up much less space than 30fps 720p or whatever. It also isn't important to capture normal framerate recordings of what the autoplay bots are looking at because you could always go back and look at the actual video by yourself. And in the end making a huge time lapse for all of them would be much easier. 

[xnamkcor]

Linus, "foster ethnic diversity" is code for "artificially enforce and equal number of X", where X= race, religion, etc.

We already have "de facto" diversity on YouTube. What they are proposing is more like "de jure" diversity.

[othertomperson]

Can someone explain the Amazon Affiliate thing at all? From the way Linus explains it, it sounds like you're allowed to have an affiliate link, but you're not allowed to tell anyone that it exists, or how they can use it.

 

Surely you can't be serious?

[xnamkcor]

7 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

Can someone explain the Amazon Affiliate thing at all? From the way Linus explains it, it sounds like you're allowed to have an affiliate link, but you're not allowed to tell anyone that it exists, or how they can use it.

 

Surely you can't be serious?

Sounds like telling people how to automate the process was a no-no.

[othertomperson]

1 hour ago, xnamkcor said:

Sounds like telling people how to automate the process was a no-no.

What do you mean by "automate"? Just using it as your bookmark link?

[R_M_Renfield]

I can help with the .onmicrosoft.com email address. I work for a fairly large sized Microsoft partner and have to deal with this at clients all the time.

 

First are you syncing Active Directory with Office 365? if so then this wont work but there is another process for it that I could give you.

 

If you just have in cloud accounts download and install the Azure Active Directory module for windows powershell from the linked Microsoft article.

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj151815.aspx

 

Reboot after both pieces are installed

 

Open powershell as admin.

 

Run Connect-msolservice

 

input admin creds for Office 365.

 

After it connects run Run Set-MsolUserPrincipalName –UserprincipalName Name@example.onmicrosoft.com –NewUserPrincipalName Name@example.com

 

Then users will be able to log in with the regular email address'

 

If you are syncing with Active Directory the process is a bit more complicated. Let me know and I can help with that as well.

[RedRound2]

Wow, you guys didn't cover arguably the biggest event of the week WWDC.

 

[xnamkcor]

22 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

Wow, you guys didn't cover arguably the biggest event of the week WWDC.

 

WWDC? Thew World Series of developer conferences?

[RedRound2]

2 hours ago, xnamkcor said:

WWDC? Thew World Series of developer conferences?

Pretending that dont know to prove my statement otherwise. You need to do better than that.

And wow you must've spent quite a time of your life figuring out another expansion for WWDC, when its obvious you gave up on the second W 

[xnamkcor]

50 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

Pretending that dont know to prove my statement otherwise. You need to do better than that.

And wow you must've spent quite a time of your life figuring out another expansion WWDC, when its obvious you gave up on the second W 

Can you post in your native language? I may be able to understand it better.

[SydneySideSteveSomewheres]

On 6/19/2016 at 6:46 AM, othertomperson said:

Can someone explain the Amazon Affiliate thing at all? From the way Linus explains it, it sounds like you're allowed to have an affiliate link, but you're not allowed to tell anyone that it exists, or how they can use it.

 

Surely you can't be serious?

I seem to remember something about Amazon and Bookmarking and a customer who was pissed about (maybe from Calif.) his/her machine being controlled by a weblink in an internet page. That he/she specifically did not want that machine (that he/she "own and control") to navigate to, but it did navigate to that site (Amazon.com) so and he/she were subsequently offended, and sought legal retribution.

Quote

Associates Program Participation Requirements

This Associates Program Participation Requirements page is part of the Operating Agreement that governs your participation in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. This page describes requirements and restrictions applicable to you as a Program participant. From time to time, we may modify the participation requirements described on this page in accordance with the Operating Agreement. All capitalized terms used below that are not defined on this page have the meanings given to them in the Operating Agreement. 
1.    You will ensure that your site is not unsuitable (as described in Section 2 of the Operating Agreement).

2.    You will not display or otherwise use our or our affiliates’ trademarks or logos (including any Amazon Mark) except solely as expressly permitted under and in accordance with the Operating Agreement.

3.    You will not display or otherwise use any trademark or logo of any third party seller on the Amazon Site in connection with any Special Link unless you have obtained from that seller the specific right to do so.

4.    You will not remove, obscure, or alter, or make invisible, illegible, or indecipherable to visitors of your site, any “Privacy Information” link or any of our or our affiliates’ trademarks or logos (including any Amazon Mark) that we include in a Special Link.

5.    You will use Content solely in accordance with the terms of the Operating Agreement and within the express scope of the license granted in Section 11 of the Operating Agreement. Without limiting the foregoing, you will (a) use Content solely to send end users and sales to the Amazon Site and will not link any Content to, or in conjunction with any Content direct traffic to, any page of a site other than the Amazon Site (however, parts of your site that are not closely associated with the Content may contain links to sites other than the Amazon Site); and (b) link each use of the Content solely to the related Product detail page or other relevant page of the Amazon Site and not to any other page.

6. You will not engage in any promotional, marketing, or other advertising activities on behalf of us or our affiliates, or in connection with the Amazon Site or the Program, that are not expressly permitted under the Operating Agreement.  For example, you will not engage in any promotional, marketing, or other advertising activities in any offline manner, including by using any of our or our affiliates’ trademarks or logos (including any Amazon Mark), any Content, or any Special Link in connection with an offline promotion or in any other offline manner (e.g., in any printed material, mailing, SMS, MMS, email or attachment to email, or other document, or any oral solicitation).  Upon our request, you will provide us with written certification that you have complied with this Section 6.  We will specify the form of, and content required in, that certification in our request.  Any failure by you to provide the certification in accordance with our request will constitute a material breach of this Operating Agreement.

7.    Except as agreed between you and us in a separate written agreement referencing this Participation Requirement, you will not use any Content or Special Link, or otherwise link to the Amazon Site, on or in connection with:

a. any client-side software application (e.g., a browser plug-in, helper object, toolbar, extension, or component or any other application executable or installable by an end user) on any device, including computers, mobile phones, tablets, or other handheld devices, other than Approved Mobile Applications; or

b. any television set-top box (e.g., digital video recorders, cable or satellite boxes, streaming video players, blu-ray players, or dvd players) or Internet-enabled television (e.g., GoogleTV, Sony Bravia, Panasonic Viera Cast, or Vizio Internet Apps).

8.    You will not add to, delete from, or otherwise alter any Content in any way, including by adding additional information (e.g., you may not insert words into a customer review), except that you may resize Content consisting of a graphic image in a manner that maintains the original proportions of the image or truncate Content consisting of text in a manner that does not materially alter the meaning of the text or cause the text to become factually incorrect or misleading.

9.    You will not sell, resell, redistribute, sublicense, or transfer any Content or any application that uses, incorporates, or displays any Content. For example, you will not use, or enable or facilitate the use of, Content on or within any application, platform, site, or service (including social networking sites) that requires you to sublicense or otherwise give any rights in or to any Content to any other person or entity, nor will you create links formatted with your Associates tag for, or display such links on, a site that is not your site. 

10.    You will promptly remove from your site and delete or otherwise destroy any Content that is no longer displayed on the Amazon Site or that we notify you is no longer available for your use.

11.    You will not use any Content, including any name or likeness embodied in that Content, in a manner that implies a person’s or company’s endorsement or sponsorship of, or commercial tie-in or other association with, any product, service, party, or cause (including by placing unrelated third party materials in close proximity to Content).

12.    You will not seek to purchase or register any Proprietary Term for use in any Search Engine; purchase, register, or otherwise use any Proprietary Term as or in a domain or subdomain name; or register or use any Proprietary Term as or in any Associates ID or “tag.” In addition to any other rights or remedies available to us, upon our request you will cause any Search Engine designated by us to exclude Proprietary Terms from keywords used to display your advertising content in association with search results (e.g., request exclusion by negative keyword bidding), assuming the Search Engine offers such exclusion capabilities.

13.    You will not bid on or purchase keywords, search terms, or other identifiers (including Proprietary Terms) or otherwise participate in keyword auctions on any Search Engine if the resulting paid search advertisement is a Prohibited Paid Search Placement. You may purchase paid search advertisements and submit links to Search Engines to appear in response to a general Internet search query or keyword (i.e., in natural, free, organic, or unpaid search results), so long as you comply with the Operating Agreement and those paid or unpaid search results send users to your site and not directly or indirectly, via a Redirecting Link, to the Amazon Site.

14.    You will not offer any person or entity any consideration or incentive (including any money, rebate, discount, points, donation to charity or other organization, or other benefit) for using Special Links (e.g., by implementing any “rewards” or loyalty program that incentivizes persons or entities to visit the Amazon Site via your Special Links).

15.    You will not intercept, record, redirect, read, interpret, or fill in the contents of any electronic form or other material submitted to us by any person or entity.

16.    You will not request, collect, obtain, store, cache, or otherwise use any account information used by our customers in connection with any Amazon Site (including any usernames or passwords of Amazon Site customers).

17.    You will not modify, redirect, suppress, or substitute the operation of any button, link, or other feature of the Amazon Site.

18.    You will not make any orders or engage in other transactions of any kind on the Amazon Site on behalf of any other person or entity, or authorize, assist, or encourage any other person or entity to do so.

19.    You will not use Special Links to link to the Amazon Site from references to items on your site that are not Products.

20.    You will not take any action that could reasonably cause any customer confusion as to our relationship with you, or as to the site on which any functions or transactions (e.g., search, browse, or order) are occurring.

21.    You will not include on your site, display, or otherwise use Special Links or Content in connection with any spyware, malware, virus, worm, Trojan horse, or other malicious or harmful code, or any software application not expressly and knowingly authorized by users prior to being downloaded or installed on their computer or other electronic device.

22.    You will not frame the Amazon Site, or any part of it, within your site, including by display within an integrated web browser (e.g., WebView) within a Mobile Application. However, displaying a Special Link on your site, including results from the AMA API, in accordance with the Operating Agreement will not be considered a violation of this Participation Requirement.

23.    You will not post or serve any Special Links or other content promoting the Amazon Site within any pop-up or pop-under windows, transitional page ads, or layer ads around or in conjunction with the display of any site that is not your site.

24.    You will not include any Special Links in any content that you place on the Amazon Site (for example, in connection with any advertising service available through the Amazon Site or in a customer review, forum, listmania, guide, or any other customer-generated context available on the Amazon Site).

25.    You will not attempt to circumvent the Associates Program Advertising Fee Schedule or artificially increase your advertising fees (e.g., by intentionally featuring, purchasing, or requesting or encouraging any other person or entity to purchase, low-price items offered on the Amazon Site (as determined by us) for the purpose of exceeding any advertising fee threshold, or by causing any page of the Amazon Site to open in a customer’s browser other than as a result of the customer clicking on a Special Link on your site).

26.    You will not attempt to intercept or redirect (including via software installed on users’ computers) traffic from or on, or divert advertising fees from, any site that participates in the Program.

27. You will not artificially generate clicks or impressions on your site or create Sessions on the Amazon Site, whether by way of a robot or software program or otherwise.

28. You will not display or otherwise use any of our customer reviews or star ratings, in part or in whole, on your site unless you have obtained a link to that customer review or star rating through the Product Advertising API and you comply with the requirements set forth in the License Agreement.

29. You will not purchase any Product(s) through Special Links for use by you or for resale or commercial use of any kind. Similarly, you will not request or encourage any of your friends, relatives, or associates to purchase any Product(s) through Special Links for use by you or them or for resale or commercial use of any kind. Further, you will not offer any Products on your site for resale or commercial use of any kind.

30. You will not cloak, hide, spoof, or otherwise obscure the URL of your site containing Special Links (including by use of a redirecting page) or the user agent of the application in which Content is displayed or used such that we cannot reasonably determine the site or application from which a customer clicks through such Special Link to the Amazon Site.

31. You will not knowingly collect, use, or disclose personal information from children under 13 years of age.

The above quote was obtained through the public internet and is used above as an example which may or may not be representative of actions taken by Amazon in this case. It has not been changed by ablation or formatting and represents a true replication. [Accessed 2016/06/22 from https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/participation/186-9254443-9405244] 

 

 

 

 

With the public disclaimer out of the way...section six looks likely, "constitute a material breach of this Operating Agreement." and this is where he admits his account is. But section five "direct traffic to, any page of a site other than the Amazon Site" could be inferred (construed, shoe horned) that the LTT support the cause page is doing this. Then at the bottom section twenty-nine states "you will not request or encourage any of your friends, relatives, or associates to purchase", so damned if you do and dammed if you do not.