“This terrible year has claimed a literary giant and a humanitarian spirit,” tweeted novelist Stephen King, adding later that “The Little Drummer Girl was one of the best novels I’ve ever read.” Margaret Atwood tweeted “His Smiley novels are key to understanding the mid-20th century.” And the Associated Press tells the story of how spy-novel writer John le Carré was “drawn…
Tag: Writer
Do Games Made Under Crunch Conditions Deserve ‘Best Direction’ Awards?
The annual Game Awards ceremony awarded this year’s “Best Direction” award to Naughty Dog studio’s The Last of Us Part II — provoking a strong reaction from Kotaku’s staff writer. “I think it’s pretty obvious that no game that required its developers to crunch, like The Last of Us Part II did, should be given a Best Direction award.” It’s no…
Legendary Science Fiction Author Ben Bova Has Passed At the Age of 88
Ben Bova “was the author of more than 120 works of science fact and fiction,” according to Wikipedia, and was also a six-time winner of the Hugo Award. “He was also president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America.” Tor.com reports Bova has passed “due to complications from COVID-19 and a stroke…” Born in 1932,…
How to land a good letter of recommendation: Advice from an admissions expert
by Mary Beth Carroll, Assistant Director of Student Affairs in the Office of Student Engagement and Practice at the University of Michigan School of Public Health Most graduate school applications require two to three letters of recommendation, which provide another dimension to your application and, when viewed alongside other factors such as your GPA, professional experience and […]
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The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
Reader shanen shares a report (and offers this commentary): When the open source concept emerged in the ’90s, it was conceived as a bold new form of communal labor: digital barn raisings. If you made your code open source, dozens or even hundreds of programmers would chip in to improve it. Many hands would make light work. Everyone would feel ownership….
New Online Bookshop Unites Indies To Rival Amazon
It is being described as a “revolutionary moment in the history of bookselling”: a socially conscious alternative to Amazon that allows readers to buy books online while supporting their local independent bookseller. And after a hugely successful launch in the US, it is open in the UK from this week. From a report: Bookshop was dreamed up by the writer and…
Netflix CEO on Paying Sky-High Salaries: ‘The Best Are Easily 10 Times Better Than Average’
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, writing at CNBC: In the first few years of Netflix, we were growing fast and needed to hire more software engineers. With my new understanding that high talent density would be the engine of our success, we focused on finding the top performers in the market. In Silicon Valley, many of them worked for Google, Apple, and…
Cory Doctorow Crowdfunds His New Audiobook to Protest Amazon/Audible DRM
Science fiction writer Cory Doctorow (also a former EFF staffer and activist) explains why he’s crowdfunding his new audiobook online. Despite the large publishers for his print editions, “I can’t get anyone to do my audiobooks. Amazon and its subsidiary Audible, which controls 90% of the audiobook sales, won’t carry any of my audiobooks because I won’t let them put any…
Boardwatch/EVTV Founder Jack Rickard Dies at Age 65
I’ve only paid for a magazine subscription once in my life — to Jack Rickard’s Boardwatch magazine, which through the late 1990s was the geekiest read in town. You can still read 70 issues of the magazine from more than 25 years ago at Archive.org. But this week the small Southeast Missourian newspaper reported that the magazine’s original editor/publisher Jack Rickard…
Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’ Makes a Global Bet on the Film Industry
In Christopher Nolan’s new thriller, “Tenet,” the fate of humanity pivots on characters moving back and forth through time. It is an epic, brain-bending exploration of ideas the filmmaker has spent decades examining. But now, as “Tenet” opens after multiple delays in cinemas around the world, it comes loaded with symbolism that its writer and director could never have foreseen. From…