This renovation makes way for an integrated kitchen and study area, a bedroom and a flexible living room.

In this open source design project, Dos Uno shares cool, easy to make designs for chairs, tables and shelves using cheap readily available materials.

It costs a lot more to run a suburb than it does to run a city.

It is my favourite part of the Interior Design Show, the corner of the floor where all the young new designers get to strut their stuff.

Omar Sherzad's single-room art studio doubles as a second home for his family of four. Who wouldn't want a night at the museum?

Maio Studio turned an old, dark launderette into a bright new co-working space for creative professionals.

Two structures are joined by a deck; one part on a solid foundation, the other on wheels to become a traveling studio and performance space.

European Court of Auditors

#ChangeTheNumbers - Entdecken Sie die Ergebnisse der Studie

Vivo’s New Flagship Smartphone V3 & V3Max: Faster than Faster

Behind the scenes with Elizabeth Goodman Artis, Natalie Morales, Danielle Brooks, Padma Lakshmi and Sara Bareilles at the 2016 MORE/SHAPE Women’s Half-Marathon in Central Park on April 17.

Turtle Beach Reveals the All-New Elite Pro

Vivo’s New Flagship Smartphone V3 & V3Max: Faster than Faster

Behind the scenes with Elizabeth Goodman Artis, Natalie Morales, Danielle Brooks, Padma Lakshmi and Sara Bareilles at the 2016 MORE/SHAPE Women’s Half-Marathon in Central Park on April 17.

Turtle Beach Reveals the All-New Elite Pro

Edward James Olmos

Is a Nonsurgical Facelift a Reality and How Does it Impact Facial Aging?

Behind the scenes with Elizabeth Goodman Artis, Natalie Morales, Danielle Brooks, Padma Lakshmi and Sara Bareilles at the 2016 MORE/SHAPE Women’s Half-Marathon in Central Park on April 17.

With Schwab Stock Slices, investors will be able to trade fractional shares of any S&P 500 company, including Amazon, Apple, Disney, Facebook and Netflix, starting at $5 each.

"We must reduce budget expenditures sharply," the Saudi finance minister said over the weekend. "Saudi finances need more discipline and the road ahead is long."

Allianz, which is one of the main insurers for entertainment companies, estimates that Hollywood studios paid $400 million in premiums last year to cover "unforeseeable events." Now the bill is coming due.

Starting Wednesday in the U.S. and Canada, Instagram users can tap on a gift card or food order to make a purchase through a company's site. Fundraisers created by a business or its supporter open on Facebook.

Sen. Ted Cruz said a group of nine senators recently ripped into the Saudi ambassador to the United States in a conference call over its oil price war with Russia.

The crude crush continues after yesterday's surge. With CNBC's Seema Mody and the Futures Now traders, Brian Stutland from the CME and Anthony Grisanti at the NYMEX.

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Saudi Arabia and Russia aim to inflict pain on American producers, forcing them to shutter wells and give up the market share.

General Circular No. 20/2020F.No. 2/4/2020-CL-VGovernment of IndiaMinistry of Corporate Affairs5th Floor, ‘A&rs

How many company audit a CA can do in a year and what are the general limits placed on a CA ?

Bank audit revision notes by CA Ekta Shah prepared from ICAI Module covering all questions

Handwritten full notes - Bank Audit - CA Inter by CA Ekta Shah

Here is a compact 'Bank Branch Audit Program 2019-20' covering all the important aspects of a normal 'Bank Branch Audit'. Hope you would find it useful.

The delay in retrospective amendment regarding computation of interest liability under GST regime has led to flood of writ petitions in High Courts seeking relief from recovery proceedings initiated by the government. The revenue authorities have consistently held that interest liability gets automa

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®

Founded in 2010, The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award bills itself as "the richest prize for a single short story in the English language." And indeed, the prize is major: the winner receives a cool £30,000 (no, I did not add extra zeroes.)

With judges yet to be finalized, the selection process will include a 20-story longlist announced in May 2020, a six-story shortlist unveiled in June 2020, and the winner revealed on July 2. The shortlisted stories will be published in an Audible audiobook, with included writers receiving "an extra £1,000 fee, on top of a prize payment of £1,000". To be eligible, writers must previously have had at least one work published in the UK or Ireland by an "established print publisher or an established printed magazine" (the Terms and Conditions include an extensive list of the kinds of publishers and magazines that don't qualify). The contest is open for entries until 6:00 pm on December 13.

You can read more about the award, including the prestigious judges who've participated and the well-known writers who've submitted stories, here.

So what's the catch? -- because you know I wouldn't be writing this post if there weren't one. Well, as so often happens, it's in the Terms and Conditions. Specifically:


To summarize this dense paragraph: simply by entering the competition, you are granting a sweeping, non-expiring license not just to Times Newspapers Limited (The Sunday Times' parent company), but also to Audible and any other licensees of TNL, to use your story or any part of it in any way they want, anywhere in the world, without payment to or permission from you.

This is far from the first time I've written about "merely by entering you grant us rights forever" clauses in the guidelines of literary contests, some of them from major publishers or companies that should know better. Sure, in this case the license is non-exclusive, so you could sell your story elsewhere--but only as a reprint, because by granting non-exclusive rights to one company, you remove your ability to grant first rights to another, at least for as long as the initial rights grant is in force.

It's not uncommon for literary contests that involve publication to bind all entrants to a uniform license or grant of rights--so that, when winners are chosen, the license is already in place. But ideally, the license should immediately expire for entries that are removed from consideration--or, if the contest sponsor wants to retain the right to consider any entered story for publication (as TNL clearly does--see Clause 4.2, below), rights should be released within a reasonable period of time after the contest finishes--say, three or six months. There's simply no good reason to make a perpetual claim on rights just in case, at some unspecified point in the future, you might just possibly want to use them.

Not to mention--why should Audible get to make this same claim?

There's a couple of other things to be aware of. Shortlisted authors enter into a 12-month exclusive contract with Audible, for which they are given a "one-off" lump-sum payment (the £1,000 noted above). But thereafter, Audible retains the right "to record, distribute and market such audio version for at least ten (10) years." Again, this right is non-exclusive--but there's no indication that Audible has to pay these authors for potentially exploiting their work for a decade. (If you don't consent to these terms, you can't be shortlisted.)


Finally, although publication is guaranteed only for the shortlist, TNL reserves the right to publish longlist and non-listed entries as well. Great! Except...there's nothing to suggest these writers would be paid either.


There's no question that this is a prestigious--and, for the winner, rich--award. But sober evaluation is definitely in order here. Enter at your own risk.

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®

Two issues involving Audible's ACX have come across my desk recently.

Rights Fraud

I've heard from several self- and small press-pubbed authors who report that they've found their books listed on ACX as open to narrator auditions...except that they, or their publishers, didn't put them there. This appears to be an attempt to steal authors' audio rights.

Below is one listing. Here's another and another and another. (All of these listings have been invalidated by ACX.)


See "Comments from the Rights Holder" at the bottom. The purported company, Publishing D LLC, does not show up on any searches.

The fraud seems pretty elaborate. Here's what one of the authors who contacted me told me:


These comments from a freelance audiobook narrator illustrate that "Publishing D" is not an isolated incidence.

Promotional Code Shenanigans

Multiple authors have contacted me to report that they've received an email from ACX withdrawing their promotional codes. The cited reason: "unusual activity," with no explanation of what that means.

The authors say that they have not used the codes improperly or violated ACX guidelines; in some cases, they've used the codes only a handful of times or not at all. See, for instance, blog posts by authors G. Michael Vasey and Adam Piggott. Per discussions on the KBoards and Reddit, a lot of authors seem to be affected.

Is this one of Amazon's (Audible's parent company) periodic crackdowns on misuse or fraud that has inadvertently ensnared innocent authors? According to author and self-publishing expert David Gaughran, ACX promo code scamming is a major problem, and Amazon's anti-abuse sweeps often involve a lot of collateral damage. Or could it be an error--a glitch or rogue algorithm?

So far, authors' efforts to get a fuller explanation have run up against the black box that is Amazon:


If I hear anything further, I'll update this post.

UPDATE 11/27/19: One of the authors who alerted me to the promo code withdrawal has received a notice saying that their codes are reinstated--however, they say that the promo code tab has yet to appear in their dashboard.


UPDATE 2/25/29: More about ACX scams, from a comment left by a narrator:

About the ACX thing...I was contacted by ACX to narrate three books, however, the person who offered the contracts kept emailing and frantically telling me to send them my book codes. I got leary and called ACX. They said unfortunately there are many scams taking place where if a book is "unclaimed" in their system, someone may grab it and offer it as an audiobook contract. Then they keep the codes and blackmarket sell them. They do not pay the narrators. Many other authors are experiencing it, they said, but they have no way to regulate it.

I declined the offers and got a nasty note from the contract holder. I was also told that since I corresponded with them, they had my email that is associated with Amazon..the same one. So, ACX said I had to go change my email on Amazon or they would have access there too. Geez.

It occurs to me that, if I were better at marketing myself, I’d be writing and sending out press releases titled, “New York Times Number One Best Selling Audiobook Narrator […]

We want to see your photos, videos and audio of what it is like doing your job on the frontline

Staff working for the NHS have expressed concern about the lack of protective personal equipment, with photographs circulating on social media of staff creating their own makeshift items, including with clinical waste bags.

We want to see healthcare workers’ photos, videos and audio of what it is like doing their job.

Continue reading...

She is the oldest person to grace the fashion bible’s cover – and she’s a hit on social media. Who says that getting older signals an end to vitality?

You can’t call Judi Dench lazy when it comes to contributing to society, but she’s been particularly dedicated to boosting morale of late. Who knows, perhaps she felt pressured to make up for her turn in the unhinged Cats film, where her feline character horrified viewers by appearing to wear a coat made of its own fur. Dench has provided vital comic relief during this time of crisis, predominantly with silly social media clips – a Twitter video of her wearing a novelty dog hat with pop-up ears in which she instructs us to “keep laughing” racked up 5.4 million views. Now she has supplied a far meatier pick-me-up by becoming, at 85, British Vogue’s oldest cover star.

Related: Judi Dench becomes British Vogue's oldest cover star

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Trailer previews sci-fi action game from Tales of Vesperia team

Anime will later air on TV in Japan starting on July 8

via http://deutscheundjapaner.com/projects/kalendervorschau

via http://deutscheundjapaner.com/projects/kalendervorschau

via http://deutscheundjapaner.com/projects/ucon_dj

via http://deutscheundjapaner.com/projects/ucon_dj

With social media, newspapers and politicians all espousing unverified covid-19 findings, use these seven signs to tell if a study should be treated with caution

Milo Yawannapissoff and Michelle Malkin have been collaborating, and the results are even more awful than you can probably imagine. They decided to work together to create an “America First” reading list for their followers. Just from their choice of subject you can tell it’s going to be a collection of racists’ greatest hits. Milo […]

A:Estudiantes-Barcelona, FIFA Club World Cup UAE 2009 final: Barcelona won their sixth trophy of the year following a last-gasp equaliser and a headed winner in extra time against a dogged Argentine opponent.

GUWAHATI, INDIA - OCTOBER 17: Claudio Gomes of France and Abel Ruiz of Spain pose for photos with referees prior to the FIFA U-17 World Cup India 2017 Round of 16 match between France and Spain at Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium on October 17, 2017 in Guwahati, India. (Photo by Tom Dulat - FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)