Trope-ing redux

News of the day 😊 

Updated June 17, 2019 -- after being out of stock almost instantly, Amazon has the TPB edition back in its inventory 😄

Trope-ing the Light Fantastic: The Science Behind the Fiction is newly re-released in trade paperback. The initial -- and until now, only -- print edition was in hardback format.

Edward M. Lerner has produced the best-ever guide to putting the science in science fiction, and he’s done it with clarity, wit, and panache.”
— Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Quantum Night

Not familiar with Trope-ing the Light Fantastic? It's my 2018 nonfiction book exploring the scientific underpinnings of the many tropes of our favorite genre. Faster-than-light travel (from which, of course, the book takes its title). Time travel. Interstellar warfare. True (human-equivalent or higher) artificial intelligence. Telepathy. And so much more ....

Curious? Here's what I posted for the book's initial release. And (this being a strictly commercial announcement), here are Amazon links for the:

• original/hardback edition, 
• new/trade-paperback edition,
• Kindle edition.

(And if you're not an Amazonian? No problemo. Your favorite other etailer will also be carrying the book in its various editions, and your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore -- if you don't find this title on their physical shelves -- will always happily order a copy for you.)

Yikes!

From this morning's Washington Post:

"It’s the middle of the night. Do you know who your iPhone is talking to? Apple says, 'What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone.' Our privacy experiment showed 5,400 hidden app trackers guzzled our data — in a single week."

(And before Android users breathe a sigh of relief and move on ... the article eventually makes clear that Android is no different.)

In a word ... scary.

Antisocial networking

NOT (you may be shocked to read) a tirade about Facebook or Twitter ....

I'm being sucked down a different rabbit hole. In this era, an authorial website is -- beyond de rigeur -- essential. And so, for a bit, in lieu of blogging, I'm diverting myself onto some (long) overdue maintenance of my authorial website.

My intergalactic portal ....

If you're after a peek at my view of things, your best bet for now might be to take a gander at that website: edwardmlerner.com.

And if you encounter that website being unavailable or contrary? Then you'll know I'm still doing battle with Wordpress ....

Ugh.

From the WaPo ...

"The Census is vulnerable to digital attack. But Congress may be dropping the ball."

A key, horrifying snippet:

If vulnerabilities in census systems aren’t dealt with, there’s a risk that hackers could compromise Americans’ data — such as birth dates, marital status and telephone numbers — on a mass scale. And that data could be used to help file phony tax returns, apply for credit cards or for other nefarious purposes.

More troubling, if hackers manipulated information collected by the bureau, that could compromise all manner of government tasks, including drawing congressional districts and allocating federal grants.

As though the hack a few years back of the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM), compromising many years of security-clearance applications, shouldn't have been an object lesson.

And later in the same WaPo article:

Members of the House Appropriations panel, however, didn’t ask a single question about the cybersecurity weaknesses during the two-hour hearing ... 

That "didn't ask a single question" tell us that neither party's committee members inquired. This is bipartisan blindness/negligence.

O. M. G.