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An experimental new Internet-based form of money is created that anyone can generate at home; people build frightening firetrap computers full of video cards, putting out so much heat that one operator is hospitalised with heatstroke and brain damage. A young physics student starts a revolutionary new marketplace immune to State coercion; he ends up ordering hits on people because they might threaten his great experiment, and is jailed for life without parole. Fully automated contractual systems are proposed to make business and the law work better; the contracts people actually write are unregulated penny stock offerings whose fine print literally states that you are buying nothing of any v...
Silicon Valley tries to disrupt the world — and the world says “no.” Facebook: the biggest social network in history. A stupendous, world-shaping success. But governments were giving Facebook trouble over personal data abuses, election rigging and fake news. Mark Zuckerberg wondered: what if Facebook could pivot to finance? Or, better: what if Facebook started its own private world currency? Facebook could have so much power that governments couldn’t stop them. It would be the Silicon Valley dream. Facebook launched Libra in June 2019. Libra would be an international currency and payment system. It would flow instantly around the world by phone. It could even “bank the unbanked.”...
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The developed world has mostly come to use banks to transfer money between accounts, using digital money. However, this isn’t a complete solution since a shop’s card reader could be down, your payment gateway might charge fees, and you may want to send money to someone not on the same banking network. #2 Bitcoins are a bit like money in a bank account with a debit card, except there is no safety net and no way to reverse a transaction. You can earn, spend, save, and invest them, but they aren’t actually yours. #3 Bitcoin is secured by math. The blockchain is a digital ledger that is tamper-evident. It contains every confirmed transaction since January 2009. #4 Bitcoin is a digital currency that requires competitive Proof of Work to write to the ledger. The competition gets viciously Darwinian very quickly, and the electricity is literally wasted for the sake of decentralisation.
Ainsworth (Senior Conservation Research Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) examines the work of the great Bruges painter Gerard David (ca. 1455-1523), focusing on the motivating forces behind the startling changes in his work caused by shifting devotional practices, changing art markets, the accommodation of foreign art clients, and the evolving secular nature of painting demanded by the newly wealthy middle class in the early years of the 16th century. Illustrations, some 343 in all, include abundant comparative material, such as drawings and workshop copies, as well as 69 superb color reproductions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This volume follows on from Pacht's work on the Van Eycks and their circle, to encompass the great artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Figures such as Van Der Weyden, Bouts, Christus, Van Der Goes and Memling, as well as lesser known artists, are examined in turn. With detailed discussion of particular paintings, style and symbolism.
He Used A Claw Hammer. . . Frankie Cochran knew her boyfriend, David Gerard, was possessive, controlling, and prone to violent rages. When she tried to break up with him, Gerard threatened her with a hammer. One week later, he used it to club her in the head. Again. And again. Then he stabbed her in the throat--and left her for dead. . . And A Sharp Knife. . . Miraculously, Frankie survived--but cops began to suspect Gerard of other vicious crimes. One of his previous girlfriends had died in a house fire, along with her children and her mother. A local prostitute's brutalized body was found in a pool of blood. But it was the unsolved murder of another woman--repeatedly run over on a country road--that finally exposed Gerard as a rage-driven monster out of control. . . To Unleash His Rage Justice finally caught up with Gerard. Hounded by the tireless efforts of detectives and incriminated by DNA evidence as well as up-to-date forensics that matched the tire marks at a crime scene to Gerard's car, one of the Pacific Northwest's most dangerous killers was finally locked behind bars. With 16 pages of shocking photos!
This the memoir of Gerard Basset, OBE, the greatest wine professional of his generation. A school dropout, Gerard had to come to England to discover his passion. He threw himself into learning everything he could about wine, immersing himself in the world of Michelin star restaurants and beginning the steep climb to the top of the career ladder. Tasting Victory charts his business successes: co-founding and selling the innovative Hotel du Vin chain and founding, with his wife Nina, the much-loved Hotel TerraVina. It recounts in detail just how he managed to earn his unprecedented sequence of qualifications; Gerard is the first and only individual to hold the famously difficult Master of Wine...
Books, and the printed word more generally, are aspects of modern life that are all too often taken for granted. Yet the emergence of the book was a process of immense historical importance and heralded the dawning of the epoch of modernity. In this much praised history of that process, Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin mesh together economic and technological history, sociology and anthropology, as well as the study of modes of consciousness, to root the development of the printed word in the changing social relations and ideological struggles of Western Europe.
A brand-new, gripping legal thriller in the tradition of John Grisham and Michael Crichton. In the twenty-first century, modern-day treasure hunters scour the seas for ancient shipwrecks, the last remnants of the Age of Discovery. By using sophisticated equipment and old nautical records, these daring adventurers uncover ships long lost to history, worth colossal sums in gold and silver. Against this backdrop, young lawyer Jack Carver meets his newest client, Ashley Marcum, who is looking for advice after her brother's mysterious death. Their only clue is a set of unidentified gold coins--which Jack and Ashley soon suspect come from one of these ancient wrecks. As Jack and Ashley scramble to discover how her brother died and uncover the origin of the coins, they find themselves locked in a global legal battle, pitted against powerful corporations and their stone-cold lawyers. Amidst twists, turns, and setbacks, Jack and Ashley must race through a history shrouded in secrets, spurred on by a case that ignites a firestorm around the world.
Rudolf Zwirner, “the man who invented the art market,” as coined in Der Spiegel, reflects on more than sixty years in the art business in his authoritative autobiography. “Americans now see Germany as a natural breeding ground for mighty gallerists and collectors, but Rudolf Zwirner’s fascinating new memoir walks us through the decades it took to rebuild an art world shattered by World War II. In this dealer’s charming telling, however, the work involved sounds more like play than labor.” —Blake Gopnik, author of Warhol An art dealer of the ages, Rudolf Zwirner, father of the esteemed gallerist David Zwirner, reached many milestones in his career. From cofounding Art Cologne, t...