275 products in Books

In The Fiat Standard, world-renowned economist Saifedean Ammous applies his unique analytical lens to the fiat monetary system, explaining it as a feat of engineering and technology just as he did for bitcoin in his global bestseller The Bitcoin Standard. This time, Ammous delves into the world's earlier shift from the gold standard to today's system of government-backed fiat money—outlining the fiat standard's purposes and failures; deriving the wider economic, political, and social implications of its use; and examining how bitcoin will affect it over time. With penetrating insight, Ammous analyzes global political currencies by analogy to bitcoin: how they're "mined" whenever government-guaranteed entities create loans, their lack of inherent restraints on inflation, and the rampant government intervention that has resulted in heavy, devastating, and persistent distortions to global markets for food, fuel, science, and education. Through these comparisons, Ammous demonstrates that bitcoin could be our next step forward—providing high salability across space, just like the fiat system, but without the unchecked fiat-denominated debt. Rather than a messy hyperinflationary collapse, the rise of bitcoin could look like a debt jubilee and an orderly upgrade to the world's monetary operating system, revolutionizing global capital and energy markets.

Real-world advice on how to be invisible online from "the FBI's most wanted hacker" (Wired). Be online without leaving a trace. Your every step online is being tracked and stored, and your identity literally stolen. Big companies and big governments want to know and exploit what you do, and privacy is a luxury few can afford or understand. In this explosive yet practical book, Kevin Mitnick uses true-life stories to show exactly what is happening without your knowledge, teaching you "the art of invisibility" -- online and real-world tactics to protect you and your family, using easy step-by-step instructions. Reading this book, you will learn everything from password protection and smart Wi-Fi usage to advanced techniques designed to maximize your anonymity. Kevin Mitnick knows exactly how vulnerabilities can be exploited and just what to do to prevent that from happening. The world's most famous -- and formerly the US government's most wanted -- computer hacker, he has hacked into some of the country's most powerful and seemingly impenetrable agencies and companies, and at one point was on a three-year run from the FBI. Now Mitnick is reformed and widely regarded as the expert on the subject of computer security. Invisibility isn't just for superheroes; privacy is a power you deserve and need in the age of Big Brother and Big Data. "Who better than Mitnick -- internationally wanted hacker turned Fortune 500 security consultant -- to teach you how to keep your data safe?" --Esquire

Bestselling author Michael Maloney makes a compelling case that the greatest opportunity of this generation to build and protect your wealth is here. The rocket fuel for any bull market, and the tinder for a bear one, are the economic and political conditions of the day... And Mike shows today is like never before. The magnitude of the potential gains become obvious when you compare today's conditions to the precious metals bull market of the 1970s. In the '70s gold rose more than 25 times its original price, and silver more than 41 times. Today there are approximately twice as many ounces of gold available for investors to buy, but globally, there are also: * 18 times more people that can access, and legally buy, precious metals. * 55 times more currency. * 56 times more millionaires. * 200 times more billionaires. * 220 times more available consumer credit. * 49 times greater global stock market cap. * And that's just the tip of the iceberg. While stocks, real estate, crypto, bonds, and nearly every major asset class have boomed, gold and silver have been largely ignored, and are now among the world's last, and most, undervalued assets. But a shift is underway. The coming flight to safety will be staggering... and gold and silver will be the big winners. After accurately predicting the crisis of 2008, Mike now presents unassailable data that an even greater crisis is coming. As you turn the pages, you'll understand the enormity of it, that we have passed an economic point of no return, and that there is no avoiding it. The old 'normal' is just not coming back. The Great Gold and Silver Rush of the 21st-Century provides a roadmap for navigating the coming economic storm. The knowledge it contains will help you protect yourself, your family, and your assets through the turbulent times ahead. Most will be devastated, many will be totally ruined, but those few who are prepared can massively increase their wealth.

One of Silicon Valley’s most successful angel investors shares his rules for investing in startups. There are two ways to make money in startups: create something valuable—or invest in the people that are creating valuable things. Over the past twenty-five years, Jason Calacanis has made a fortune investing in creators, spotting and helping build and fund a number of successful technology startups—investments that have earned him tens of millions of dollars. Now, in this enlightening guide that is sure to become the bible for twenty-first century investors, Calacanis takes potential angels step-by-step through his proven method of creating massive wealth: startups. As Calacanis makes clear, you can get rich—even if you came from humble beginnings (his dad was a bartender, his mom a nurse), didn’t go to the right schools, and weren’t a top student. The trick is learning how angel investors think. Calacanis takes you inside the minds of these successful moneymen, helping you understand how they prioritize and make the decisions that have resulted in phenomenal profits. He guides you step by step through the process, revealing how leading investors evaluate new ventures, calculating the risks and rewards, and explains how the best startups leverage relationships with angel investors for the best results. Whether you’re an aspiring investor or a budding entrepreneur, Angel will inspire and educate you on all the ins of outs. Buckle up for a wild ride into the world of angel investing!

This New York Times bestseller and business classic has been fully updated for a world where skilled communication is more important than ever. The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today’s workplace. Crucial Conversations provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation―especially difficult ones―leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, it teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person. This new edition addresses issues that have arisen in recent years. You’ll learn how to: * Respond when someone initiates aCrucial Conversationwith you * Identify and address the lag time between identifying a problem and discussing it * Communicate more effectively across digital mediums When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation poorly and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies of Crucial Conversations and improve relationships and results. Whether they take place at work or at home, with your coworkers or your spouse, Crucial Conversations have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you'll never have to worry about the outcome of a Crucial Conversation again.

This is the first genuine etymological dictionary of Old Chinese written in any language. As such, it constitutes a milestone in research on the evolution of the Sinitic language group. Whereas previous studies have emphasized the structure of the Chinese characters, this pathbreaking dictionary places primary emphasis on the sounds and meanings of Sinitic roots. Based on more than three decades of intensive investigation in primary and secondary sources, this completely new dictionary places Old Chinese squarely within the Sino-Tibetan language family (including close consideration of numerous Tiberto-Burman languages), while paying due regard to other language families such as Austroasiatic, Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mien), and Kam-Tai. Designed for use by nonspecialists and specialists alike, the dictionary is highly accessible, being arranged in alphabetical order and possessed of numerous innovative lexicographical features. Each entry offers one or more possible etymologies as well as reconstructed pronunciations and other relevant data. Words that are morphologically related are grouped together into "word families" that attempt to make explicit the derivational or other etymological processes that relate them. The dictionary is preceded by a substantive and significant introduction that outlines the author’s views on the linguistic position of Chinese within Asia and details the phonological and morphological properties, to the degree they are known, of the earliest stages of the Chinese language and its ancestor. This introduction, because it both summarizes and synthesizes earlier work and makes several original contributions, functions as a useful reference work all on its own.

An inside look at modern open source software development and its influence on our online social world. Open source software, in which developers publish code that anyone can use, has long served as a bellwether for other online behavior. In the late 1990s, it provided an optimistic model for public collaboration, but in the last 20 years it’s shifted to solo operators who write and publish code that's consumed by millions. In Working in Public, Nadia Asparouhova takes an inside look at modern open source software development, its evolution over the last two decades, and its ramifications for an internet reorienting itself around individual creators. Asparouhova, who interviewed hundreds of developers while working to improve their experience at GitHub, argues that modern open source offers us a model through which to understand the challenges faced by online creators. She examines the trajectory of open source projects, including: * The GitHub platform for hosting and development * The structures, roles, incentives, and relationships involved in open source projects * The often-overlooked maintenance required of its creators * The costs of production that endure through an application’s lifetime. Asparouhova also scrutinizes the role of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, and Instagram, which reduce infrastructure and distribution costs for creators but which massively increase the scope of interactions with their audience. Open source communities are increasingly centered around the work of individual developers rather than teams. Similarly, if creators, rather than discrete communities, are going to become the epicenter of our online social systems, we need to better understand how they work—and we can do so by studying what happened to open source.

Dave Gingery's complete 7 book Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap series available in hard back for the first time. This collector's edition has been completely updated and includes additional photos (many never before seen). Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap is a progressive series of seven projects including, The Charcoal Foundry, The Metal Lathe, The Metal Shaper, The Milling Machine, The Drill Press, The Dividing Head and The Sheet Metal Brake. Beginning with a simple charcoal fired foundry, you produce the castings for building the machine tools to equip your shop. Initially the castings are finished by simple hand methods, but it isn’t long before the developing machines are doing much of the work to produce their own parts. It does not take long to learn the simple craft of pattern-making and sand molding. Each phase of the projects increase your knowledge and skill. There is no need to look for outside help. You can do it all in your own shop. No complicated math----No exotic equipment required----No large cash outlay. Lots of work to be sure, and some of it can be downright tedious, but the reward will be a practical small scale machine shop that you might never give yourself permission to buy, assuming you could afford it.

In Ethereum for Business, Paul Brody provides a plain English guide to doing business on the world's largest blockchain. The book covers an overview of Ethereum, business applications on Ethereum, and various advanced topics. Including case studies and examples from the world of Ethereum, Ethereum for Business is readable both linearly and by dipping in and out of chapters. The book is aimed at business executives who want to understand the potential of blockchain for solving real-world business problems, and readers with technical knowledge who want to understand the business use cases. Ethereum for Business covers topics such as: • Basics of blockchain technology and key components on wallets, tokens, and keys. • Decentralization in digital marketplaces, smart contracts, privacy, scalability, supply chain management, trade finance, payments and asset transfers, and tokenomics. • Transforming the world of enterprise computing by enabling companies to model and manage assets, real or digital, that exist off-chain. • A guide for implementation that contains key success metrics for enterprises considering blockchain-based solutions.

This is one man’s chronicle, at times indignant and at others reflective, of an extraordinary moment in the history of the world, a moment of crisis whose eventual resolution will have far-reaching consequences for our children and their children. The author is Professor Thomas Harrington. His primary field of study is Hispanic culture and history, with a focus on Catalonian language, history and nationalism. With a deep knowledge of the life of a particular region and language group, he cultivated a keen insight into the difference between what is authentic and organic to a social order and what is exogenous and imposed by a ruling-class structure. He has a particular curiosity about the latter. His profound awareness of this power in operation in world events allowed him to see what so many others missed: namely he knew something was very off about the Covid response from the beginning. It’s to the eternal disgrace of so many elites in the political, economic, cultural, and academic world that so many participated in the “great reset” and, further, that so many who did not participate remained silent even as essential social, market, and cultural functioning was systematically dismantled by force with the full participation of the commanding heights of society. Privileged people, whose educational background putatively provided them with greater critical thinking skills than most, and hence an enhanced ability to see through the barrage of propaganda, fell immediately and massively into line. Not only did we see them overwhelmingly accept the government’s repressive, unproven and often patently unscientific measures to contain the Covid virus, but watched many of them emerge online and in other public forums as semi-official enforcers of repressive Government policies and Big Pharma marketing pitches. They mocked and ignored world-class doctors and scientists, and anyone else who expressed ideas that were at variance with official government policies. They told us, ridiculously, that science was not a continuous process of trial and error, but a fixed canon of immutable laws, while promoting, on that same absurd basis, the establishment and enforcement of medical apartheid within families and communities. In the name of keeping their children safe from a virus that could do them virtually no harm, they greatly impeded their long-term social, physical and intellectual development through useless mask-wearing, social distancing and screen-based learning. And in the name of protecting the elderly, they promulgated medically useless rules that forced many older people to suffer and die alone, deprived of the comfort of their loved ones. Many of these people, who by dint of their educational backgrounds should have found it more easy than most to go to the primary sources of scientific information on the virus and the measures taken to lessen its impact, chose in large numbers—with doctors being very prominent among them—to instead “educate” themselves on these important matters with curt summaries derived from the mainstream press, social media or Pharma-captured agencies like the CDC and the FDA. This, paradoxically, while millions of intrepid and less credentialed people with a greater desire to know the truth, often became quite knowledgeable about the actual state of ’the science.” This devastating case of class abdication—which essentially turned the old adage about “To whom much is given, much is expected” on its head—is a central focus of this book. It was the treason of experts.

This little book was written to accomplish something big: economic literacy. It is intentionally kept very short to be inviting rather than intimidating. You will gain life-changing understanding of how the economy works in practically no time. Per Bylund will make you excited about what economics has to offer. Because economic literacy is mind-opening. Sound economic reasoning is an enormously powerful tool for understanding both the economy and society. Economic literacy uncovers what is going on under the surface and why things work out as they do. There is no magic to it. In fact, economic literacy is necessary to properly understand the world. Short, direct, axiomatically unassailable, and devastating to the mythology of modern economics. This book not only promote Mises' views, but refutes and attacks the tragicomic orthodoxy of today’s economics mainstream.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” ―Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance…Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.