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Comment by quadrifoliate | Hacker News Reader

The article is paywalled, can anyone confirm that this is actually remote updates? If so, what's the text that shows that?

The only part I can read is the sub-heading, which says "Puffin announces plans to publish a classic collection as it emerges online libraries are being automatically updated with sensitivity changes."

This is not the same as remotely updating a version that you have on your Kindle. Rather, it would be like a library receiving an updated version of the book, which you then check out -- which could totally happen in the physical world as well.

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> can anyone confirm that this is actually remote updates?

No need to read an article for that; if you dig through the settings on a Kindle, there's an option to allow automatic book updates (probably enabled by default).

The updates happen automatically, in the background, when the device syncs, without confirmation or presenting a list of changes.

Unpaywalled: https://archive.fo/OSLQN

Key paragraphs:

Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries automatically updated with the new censored versions containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race.

Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer’s books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before the controversial updates have discovered their copies have now been changed.

[..]

Clarissa Aykroyd, 43, who works in children’s publishing, reported on social media that ebooks she bought before 2020 had been changed. She told The Times: “It feels Orwellian that we are having the updated versions forced upon us and has made me weary of ebooks. “I assumed that because the changes to the work were so big that I would be given the option of whether to download it.”

From the sound of it, someone had bought the book, didn't have it downloaded anymore, downloaded it and it was the old version. They then deleted it and downloaded it again and it was the new version. So not really remotely updated.

https://twitter.com/stoneandthestar/status/16287703797821399...

This also all happened before the decision was announced to publish both the original and the new versions, so it may have already changed again.

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