Shinycroak

I have learned something about cloud security: to secure your email or cloud, you need at least one account, somewhere, where you have a business or personal relationship with the provider (a smartphone serves this purpose for a lot of people), so that you can talk to them, or walk into their office, to recover your account. Otherwise, if an account is lost you may not be able to recover it. Obvious, but I’ve never seen it stated anywhere. When the internet started out, this was the norm; you were a member of some institution or other, or connected with some institution, and there was always someone you could go to to recover your account. Somewhere in all the chaos of creating the modern public internet, this got lost: you can lose your Google, Microsoft, or Apple account and never get it back. None of these firms are willing to accept your proofs of identity if you walk into their offices, not even Apple with its otherwise excellent customer service network. It's a hangover ...

You lease Kindle books – you don't own your copies. You can't sell them as used, give them away, or will them to your children. You can't even move them between your own accounts. Amazon can take them away or put them out of print whenever it wants to. Future researchers who wonder what was in your library are will only be able to wonder. You can't copy pages from them, even for fair use. I don't want to hear how unnecessary print books are until I can actually own my own copies of ebooks.

To someone considering vanity publication on Twitter. Fk that. In an honest publishing deal, money flows to the writer . If they want to self-publish an ebook, they need not put out money up front; they can do it at Draft2Digital . They take a percentage of sales instead instead of demanding up front money. There are similar services; this is just one that I know that an author I trust has checked out and uses. Keep in mind that the author has to provide all graphics and have all editing and marketing done themselves. This is a slow way to establish oneself as an author and it may not succeed. A real publisher assumes financial risk, fronting money for design, editing, marketing, distribution, and fulfillment; that is the whole and entire thing a publisher can do that an author cannot do for themselves. It is the entire business model of publishing to assume financial risk in the hope of making a profit . Any firm that does not assume financial risks is not a publisher. ...

Yes, but from where?

Frigidaire part number 5304506475 (120v, 6w.) Around $20 from various appliance parts stores. Apparently equivalent Philips part no. BC6S6 120v-12/2PK. (At least, it works in the dispenser.) Around $3 for two from Home Depot. Little bit greedy, aren't you, Frigidaire?

(See also " Personal Finance in a Deflationary Period " and " Don't Care If the Money's No Good ," both from 2010.) Avoid debt. There appears to be a long-term policy goal of making it impossible to get out of deep debt, once one is in it (student loans, bankruptcy "reform," etc. etc.) and with Mnuchin the likely Treasury Secretary this will only get worse. I think there will probably be an explosion in the national debt and, at the same time, possibly inflation, so that most financial assets will lose their value. Ownership of useful property is probably valuable; if you can buy your own house or capital property without taking on debt that might be wise. Insured bank deposits are not a bad bet, but do not expect the government to make good on bank deposits should the banks be brought down again: the FDIC and NCUA may run out of funds, and these may not be replenished. (Based on a short note on John Scalzi's blog .)

What a marketer has to say about Amazon bestseller lists. Last week, I put up a fake book on Amazon. I took a photo of my foot, uploaded to Amazon, and in a matter of hours, had achieved  “No. 1 Best Seller” status, complete with the orange banner and everything.— Brent Underwood . I've made an archival copy, since it is entirely possible that Amazon will be able to persuade the author to take the post down.