Amazon knows everything you do on Kindle

... and now, so do I!

OK, actually, as an author, I know much less.

In early July, Amazon decided to share with authors some of their super-secret info that they gather on all Kindle users, namely the ability to track in almost real-time what page of what book you are currently on... and you thought 'page synching' was all about making it easy to read a little on each device without losing your place :)

No no no no, it was all about Amazon collecting data.

Though, unlike amazon, I don't have names and addresses to go with the data I see, it is still telling and chilling all at the same time.

Amazon counts Kindle pages as if the book had been printed in 6x9 book form, so most of mine are 500 pages or so for those around 120,000 words. Not short stories, as most of you know.

What's fascinating to me is watching someone read a book... usually within the same day they pick it up. I don't think I've seen someone yet start reading... then give up. Though I'm sure it'll happen. I don't get many downloads in the black hole Amazon has banished me to, so it's incredibly easy to tease out individual readers.

And most shocking to me, as an author, is seeing someone every few days power-read the first six books (3/4 of a million words) in under 24 hours... then get started on #7.

What shocks me most is how rare it is for someone to take more than a day with each book in the series.

These are not short books!

A beautiful mind

From BI about the death of a beautiful mind Nash

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-beautiful-mind-mathematician-john-nash-made-all-of-his-discoveries-before-he-was-30-2015-5

"....In many cases, these ideas seemed to appear out of thin air.

"Nash was described as having insights before he could

hammer out the proofs of their accuracy, the ideas coming to

him more like revelations than like scholarly findings,"

according to The Washington Post.

Nash was aware of his unusual process, even as his illness got

worse and he began to display irrational behavior, such as

believing he was communicating with aliens. In her biography,

Nasar describes a meeting between Nash and a former

colleague who came to visit him at a mental institution.

"How could you, a mathematician devoted to reason and

logical proof ... believe that extraterrestrials are sending you

messages?" a visitor asked, according to Nasar.

"Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me

the same way my mathematical ideas did," Nash reportedly

replied. "So I took them seriously."

..."

As an author, I understand this entirely too well.

Sometimes, getting a little distance from the voices in your head is a good thing.

Ireland does it right

For those of you who think you know what I mean by that, you don't.

What makes Ireland right is not the outcome of the vote, but that they took a vote of millions of people and not the backdoor shortcut of settling on 5 out of 9 judges to ram something down the throats of millions Without asking or allowing the 'governed' the right to have their say.

Libertarian.

Lots of people like to call it state's rights, but the principle is deeper than states, it means change should always be bottom up and not top down.

It's a harder road, a tougher path, but it's bathed in sunshine and not nearly so offensive. Now, some will be offended by my use of 'offensive' but I assure you that whatever side of the line you stand on, someone is offended. Just as some are offended by having to make wedding cakes, others are offended when the bakery turns them away.

It is one thing when five out of nine say "we unelected few have just rewritten the constitution by 'finding something' that nobody saw for hundreds of years'; that is a bitter and contentious pill for millions to be forced to swallow, and is more likely than not to fuel anger and rage against gays than to forward any good. BUT, when millions of your own countrymen, your neighbors, your cousins and uncles, cast their voice into the official record and the only poll that really matters, then there is no where to hide.

It is one thing when your teacher tells you Santa is not real, but something else entirely when everyone in your class says the same thing.

Before Ireland cast the vote, the only thing that was a certainty was that whoever lost would be offended by the results.

But there was something else that they knew before the votes were cast. They knew that if it was a landslide, that the losers could Not blame some unaccountable judge or a hundred tricky politicians, but that whatever the result, it would be the will of the governed.

The will of the people.

Libertarianism. It's another word for bottom up in a world of politicians that always think top down.

It doesn't matter if I agree or disagree with the outcome, so long as it is so loudly the will of the governed, and not the will of the elected few or the unelected 9.

I hope the activists in America see this for what it is, an example of the right way to do something.

It isn't the easy path, but giving women the vote didn't come from a 5-4 decision, it came from a constitutional amendment. If you want acceptance from the masses, you have to get it from the masses, you can't force the masses to accept it or else.

And that's not easy.

It's hard.

And it should always be hard.

Ireland did it the right way.

They convinced the people to accept it, and they voted that way.

Redneck recipes

Bachelor Cinnabons, EZbread, and pizza bread sticks:

---All are less than 10 minutes from mixing to eating---

Note: I keep a 16ounce bottle of tap water with a teaspoon of baking soda in the refrigerator for these things. Not all baking soda is equal, some have large grains for cleaning. The larger the grains, the longer it takes to dissolve, but even the biggest grains will dissolve overnight. This water to soda ratio is about perfect and is almost the only real measuring in any of these recipes. It keeps in the refrigerator for weeks and costs almost nothing, and is as good as pepto if you have an upset stomach. I call it salty or soda water and most 'soda' bottles like Coke and Pepsi come in 16 ounce screw top plastic bottles, so it's something everyone has.

========
Cinnabon:
========

Step 1. add a splash (a tablespoon or two) of vinegar to a microwave safe bowl (about the right size for cereal or soup)

If you have vanilla, add a few drops here.

Step 2. Add 3/4 cup of flour (about 1/2 a coffee mug), mix in a few tablespoons of sugar, then fold in enough 'soda water' so that there isn't any dry flour anymore. Note, this is folding, not stirring, and should last no longer than 40 seconds. Seconds. You do NOT want to stir, it will make it flat as a cracker and not at all cake-like. You're looking for damp, but not wet. I would guess it at two or three 'shot glasses' of soda water, so it's not a lot of water.

Step 3. Spoon (or fork) about half of the dough up onto the sides of the bowl. If it 'drips' down, add some flour and try again. Spread out the other half on the bottom of the bowl. Sprinkle cinnamon (and ginger if you like) onto the dough lining the bottom, then add a few tablespoons of sugar atop the cinnamon. Drizzle enough oil or water or butter on the sugar to make it damp (no dry spots, but not watery or wet).

If you're daring, add a sprinkle of cayenne to the sugar. Trust me, it sounds crazy but it's crazy good.

Step 4. Fold/spread the dough from the sides over the sugar in the center. The dough will NOT stick to sugar, so you have to stretch and smooth it from one side to the other, 'glueing' it to other dough.

Step 5. Microwave for 2-3 minutes (@1,000 watt), more or less depending on the power of your microwave. Half the watts, figure about twice as long.

Step 6. Let it sit for a minute, then take it out of the bowl and move it to the toaster and toast it to taste. If it's leaking, don't tempt fate and skip this part. It'll be more like a cinnamon pancake but that's still pretty good.

In total, this takes me an average of 6 minute, from the time I get the bowl out to the time I'm eating it. The pot of coffee takes 8, so I usually have to wait 2 minutes for the coffee maker to catch up. That's a very long 2 minutes :)

OK, it's not exactly a cinnabon, but it's good enough for me and I can't imagine making a real cinnabon in under 45 minutes. Keep in mind, this has no kneading, 30 seconds of stirring, and almost no effort at all.

=====================
Basic Bread/pizza sticks
=====================

Step 1. Add a few splashes (a tablespoon or two) of vinegar to a microwave safe bowl (for breadsticks, make it a rectangular bowl).

Step 2. Add 3/4 cup of flour (about 1/2 a coffee mug), fold in the 'soda water' until there is no dry flour remaining. This should take no more than 40 seconds of stirring, too much will ruin it. (I like to mix in some cayenne and turmeric, but if you want sweet, add some sugar)

If you want it a little 'pretzel-ish' sprinkle on some coarse salt and oil over the top of your dough just before putting it in thee microwave.

Step 3. Microwave for about 2 minutes (@1,000 watts, yours may be different) You are looking for just cooked enough that it has risen fully and can be taken out of the bowl in one piece.

Step 4. For pizza bread sticks, cut them now into sticks with a sharp knife. Take it out of the bowl and Move it to the toaster. Toast to taste. For me, I set it to medium/dark and then toast 3 times.

Step 5. For Pizza bread sticks, Add four tablespoons of spaghetti sauce or mustard or ranch dressing to a dipping bowl and have at it.

Bonus:

If you're a fan of pockets, make the bread / bread sticks like normal, but instead of adding sugar and cinnamon to the middle, like with a cinnabon, add beans, onions, hotdogs, spam, brown rice, or whatever and fold the dough from the sides over it, and toast as usual, just add an extra minute to the microwave time if the beans are from the refrigerator. Warning, soft cheese will over microwave so cut it back a minute and toast at a lower darkness but longer time.

Terrorists for the Hacking

Two terrorists, without ever meeting their handler once, plan and carry out a failed attack. Target, funding, and human weapons all radicalized and organized over the internet.

In Patent Mine it was fiction.

I suspect/fear that very soon, Political activists with reasonable hacking skills will find a few of these radicalized cells, and bend them to their will. Plan their attack for them.

Life hacking of the deadliest sort.

Politicians and their PACs already organize protests and pickets over the internet to a slightly less radicalized following. This is a smaller step than it looks.

Leak someone's schedule to a suicidal duo, blame ISIS win or fail.

I hope I'm wrong. I would like to think no US politician would stoop so low, but it only takes one with hundreds of these loaded guns floating around, waiting for cyber attack orders.   

Tesla troubles

Let me start by saying I love the Idea of Tesla and the electric car.

But.....

Well, I've done a lot of research into his newest adventure, and that's personal batteries for load shifting.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3051108/Tesla-s-home-battery-coming-Elon-Musk-set-unveil-power-pack-week.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

Load shifting is a trillion dollar business, and I don't come to those numbers lightly. It makes healthcare seem cheap. People happily give thousands to the power company to keep homes warm in the winter and cool in the summer, not to mention the gobs and gobs of power industry and Amazon server farms hum away for all this digital noise.

Few people understand electricity anyway, it might as well be magic to most.

In a nutshell his plan is to sell people batteries that charge when the grid has too much cheap power and discharge when the power is expensive, putting the difference in the users pocket as savings.

We already do this with hot water heaters that heat the water at night and just keep it warm until you need it during the day.

But Musk plans to do this with electricity, and here he will face several problems.

1. Most batteries have only so many charge/discharge cycles. Like the battery in your car or phone, they generally die after so many charging cycles. A led acid car battery dies after 5 years, or 2,000 charges, about the same as a lithium battery.

So, let's take an average car battery as an example. Its about 1,000 watts and takes half a day to charge and half a day to discharge (without hurting itself). That's about 12-18 cents worth of electricity per day. That's at most $65 a year that you can save if you charged it for free. Now, a car battery costs $100 and you need a new one every 3-5 years. So, that's $20 a year at best. 65-20 =$45 a year you could save IF YOU WERE CHARGING THE BATTERY FOR FREE. You are not. Let's say its being charged for half the price, then to charge it costs $33 a year, minus your battery, and your down to a modest $13 a year savings for a lot of trouble and danger dealing with batteries.

I have personally seen a car battery explode, it went off like a bomb, bent the hood and everything, and Musk is calling for something 10 or 20 times the size of a car battery.

2. It isn't as efficient as everyone thinks.

In general, it takes 100 watts of charging to store 80 watts of power. And to turn 100 watts of DC battery into TV watching AC you're generally losing just as much. You lose 10-20 percent charging a battery and another 10-20 percent going from battery back to AC.

These are just laws of physics. You can never get more out than you put in.

But, if someone could store massive amounts of power for next to nothing, there is a fortune to be made doing it.

For me, it's the million ton flywheel, which was city scale power for the price of water and a tunnel.

But maybe Musk knows something nobody else does. I suspect he has found a way to make batteries work where nobody else could.

I suspect he has found... a federal tax subsidy :)

Gaming the Kindle

A lot of authors are finding out that people are gaming Kindle's system in a misguided effort to gain a quick advantage over their 'competition', in this case other authors.

Amazon is suing a company that, for $$$, will flood your reviews with 5stars and use bots and such to keep your 5star reviews coming up first in all the 'voted most helpful' lists. This gaming of the system started for electronics but has now moved into book. And with books they're doing it on the cheap. An author will ask all their Facebook/Twitter followers to vote a bad review 'helpful' on another author's book to move it down and themselves up in the rankings. And, of course, vote up their own 5 stars. Some authors even refer to their Facebook followers as 'their army'.

Against a King or a Potter, these tactics are useless, but against an Indie they are devastating.

Yelp was recently sued over reviews posted by 'customers' that lived 1,000s of miles away from the store they negatively reviewed.

Sadly, the only way to fight this kind of childishness is to do the same thing yourself, something I refuse to do.

It does, however, dump a bucket of cold water over whatever passion I had left for writing. What amazon and kindle are quickly becoming is not the kind of business I want to be in.

Sadly, Amazon has the tools to eradicate this, but refuses to use them. Instead, they offer a 'service' that authors can pay Amazon for, that will help neutralize it, much like Yelp offers to help businesses that have been victimized by Yelp reviews, for a small fee of $1,000 a year.