Thursday, May 04, 2017

Vogel Legov Ridque Spots 18:88

Like death and taxes, crime is unfortunately a global constant. Lucky for us, many brilliant authors have written engrossing, riveting, and often moving nonfiction books about criminal cases throughout history. From Europe to Asia and beyond, discover some of the most engrossing true-crime books from around the world    8 True Crime Stories from Around the Globe



Facebook to hire 3000 people to stop violence and suicide in streaming live video


MARK Zuckerberg's army of 3000 people to stop the outbreak of violent assaults, killings and suicides from being broadcast on Facebook has been dismissed as too little and too late.

Police have arrested three men for allegedly using Host Card Emulation (HCE) to make fraudulent purchases. Police arrested two men yesterday in Sydney and one today. The men are alleged to be part of a group that employed HCE to make fraudulent purchases totalling $1.5 million. HCE allows phones to emulate tap-and-pay purchases credit and debit card payments using Near Field Communication (NFC) Fraud Ring

India’s controversial national ID scheme leaks fraud-friendly data for 130,000,000 people Boing Boing

Covers are the first bit of customer-facing marketing that your reader will ever see. They’re a shortcut—telling the reader in shorthand that they’ll like this book, that it’s in the genre they love to read, and that the person who wrote it is someone they can trust with their valuable (often limited) reading time. That’s a lot of information to pack into one image, and still make it effective. So what’s the secret psychology behind choosing a good cover?
And choosing … there’s a reason we’re describing covers as a choice the author makes, rather than harping on the idea of do-it-yourself versus hire-someone cover design (at least for the moment—we’ll get to this later).

Cold Covers


Sales of children’s books rose 16% to £365m, with the increase due mainly to the purchase of printed works. Readers also flocked to fitness and self-help books, sending non-fiction sales up 9%. Revenues from fiction fell 7%, the PA’s annual report said.
The Death of Book Exaggerated - BBC 


Well this seems utterly awful — the world of “alternative facts” playing out in the judiciary. [Slate]



   The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award is given for an unpublished manuscript by a young Australian writer, and this year, as Stephen Romei reports, Vogel prize goes to novel reimagining Kafka's relationship with friend. 
       Yes, Marija Pericic's The Lost Pages was inspired by the Kafka-Brod relationship -- and the legal battle over Kafka's papers that Brod mis- and man-handled. Yes, this sounds a bit dubious; still, I have to admit, I am curious, and hope that it eventually makes it to the US/UK. For now there's just the Australian Allen & Unwin edition; see their publisity page

       The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of João Almino's recent novel, Enigmas of Spring. 

       Wide-ranging, it does include the nice latitude quote the noisiest part of parliamentary pool is at the shallow end:
The world has too many images, words, and too much information, don't you think ? I want to sell silence.

        The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Mark Henshaw's The Snow Kimono. 

       This is one of those rejected-then-acclaimed works --Rejected 32 times, The Snow Kimono by Mark Henshaw wins NSW Premier's Literary Award, Susan Wyndham reported in the Sydney Morning Herald -- a second novel (more or less -- there was some co-written stuff in between) more than a quarter of a century after the author's debut. But it doesn't seem to have really taken off or made that much of an impact outside Australia. 


Amazon coming closer to MEdia Dragon and BC:
We find that Amazon saves between $0.17 and $0.47 for every 100 mile reduction in the distance of shipping goods worth $30. In the context of its distribution network expansion, this estimate implies that Amazon has reduced its total shipping cost by over 50% and increased its profit margin by between 5 and 14% since 2006. Separately, we demonstrate that prices on Amazon have fallen by approximately 40% over the same period, suggesting that a significant share of the cost savings have been passed on to consumers.