A typo caused the big Amazon Web Services outage

Mistakes happen to the best of us but it seems just one tiny “human error” has caused embarrassment for Amazon. As you know, the Amazon Web Services went down this week and disrupted many internet services for hours. It seems the error had been a typo. On Tuesday morning, an employee doing routine maintenance mistakenly entered the wrong command while trying to take offline “a small number of servers.” What was typed in took down a “larger set of servers,” including those that support two S3 subsystems. These subsystems have the data storage service used by a number of web-based services.

With these two systems offline, it took with it many services including the ones Amazon uses to update its own status page. And with the system not having been completely restarted “for many years,” it also took “longer than expected” to bring them back up. Amazon acknowledges and apologizes for the mistake and promises it has taken safeguards to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Source: Mashable

Amazon sells out printed copies of George Orwell’s ‘1984’

With truth seemingly stranger than fiction, especially in America, people are turning to literature and one classic is getting a lot of attention: George Orwell’s 1984. It’s hard not to think there’s a relationship between the cautionary tale about a brutal, amoral dictator and the first week of Donald Trump as president. Both hard cover and soft cover of the Signet Classics versions are sold out. And Penguin, the owner of Signet Classics, is looking to print more copies of the book. “We put through a 75,000 copy reprint this week,” a Penguin spokesman told CNN. “That is a substantial reprint and larger than our typical reprint for 1984.” The book has also topped Amazon’s best-selling list earlier in the week. If you haven’t read it and this latest update has gotten you curious, the book’s Kindle version is available.

Source: BGR

Bryan Cranston’s ‘Sneaky Pete’ finally gets entire season streamed on Amazon Prime Video starting January 27

Following the news that the Amazon Original Series Sneaky Pete is getting a second season and roughly a year and a half since the pilot episode aired on Amazon Prime Video, the show’s first season will finally start streaming tomorrow. Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston is an executive producer on the show alongside Graham Yost. The 10-episode show stars Giovanni Ribisi as con man Marius, who tries to live a new life outside of prison by impersonating his cellmate Pete. He tries to pass off as Pete to the man’s estranged family as Marius tries to run away from the vicious gangster he once robbed. How long he’ll be able to pull off the con? Well, you have to watch the series yourself.

Amazon Prime Video is free for Amazon Prime members. You can sign up for a free trial over at this link.

Canadian audiobook listeners prefer Amazon and Audible over iTunes

David Clare/Flickr

A new study from BookNet Canada explores the local consumers’s audiobook listening habits and methods for discovering new titles. It was found in this follow-up to a 2014 study that most users found audiobooks on websites of retailers as well as from recommendations by friends. However, it doesn’t mean these are the top places for downloading. People still prefer to borrow from public libraries or make use of free downloads to acquire new audiobooks.

But for those who do purchase audiobooks from retailers, the popular retailers to turn to are Amazon and Audible. Amazon is used 21 percent of the time this year (compared to 21.5 percent in 2014 and Audible is used to buy audiobooks 20.7 percent of the time (compared to 14.2 percent in 2014). Apple’s iTunes sees a 3 percent dip in use from 2014—they’ve gone from 17.7 percent in 2014 to 14.7 percent this year.

Source: Forbes