How to think like a Gorean Googler - What I am reading 11/19/2014

Boing Boing - Unpublished Gor Books -

Rob Beschizza presents these delightful and unexpected finds in the long-running saga of female humiliation and slavery.      

This article is intended as satire obviously, but when you attack the classic that are the Gor books, then you sir have gone too far.

Lifehacker - The Tech Skills and Courses Google Recommends for Software Engineers -

Software engineering is one of the most in-demand and best paying careers, but learning computer science can also pay off even if you don't do it professionally. Google has a guide on the courses and experiences future software engineers should consider.

Most of these courses are free, or extremely cheap.  They may not get you a job at Google, but as I keep telling my nieces and nephew, if you are going to move forward in life anymore you have to continually be expanding your base of knowledge. If you can spend 45 minutes a day cranking out a lesson or watching a couple videos then do it.  (It would be nice if someone would do something similar with infrastructure.)

Quartz - Why Amazon will never lose the book war -

Over time, there is a path for Amazon to become an author’s first-choice platform. It’s a peerless distributor that has already harnessed its prowess in warehousing and distribution logistics to its on-demand printing business, which lets it act as a wholesaler as well as a retailer of books. Bolt on a data-gathering publishing platform like Medium, or simply better integrating Kindle with Good Reads, and Amazon would have a low-cost business development sandbox, a platform that aspiring authors without followings could use to build their audiences.

I kind of agree with the author.  One of the things he misses though is Amazons ability to bring previously unpublishable authors to the marketplace.  I have read quite a few Kindle Direct Published books over the last two years, and a surprising number of them are actually very good.  They would have been better if they were more polished, but as that market expands I believe that void will fill itself.  I think that in and of itself will start cutting into the traditional publishing marketplace.