Thanks to pre-built software, password cracking keeps getting easier, and many users still don’t care. Even if you have nothing worth stealing, using strong passwords prevents attackers from social engineering to get something that is worth taking. Attackers can glean parts of secret information from different sites, or hints from your Facebook profile, to get something valuable. Sophisticated tools also make it easier to use the simple passwords to crack other passwords. See “Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger” at Ars Technica and take a look at some of the worst passwords in “10 of the worst passwords exposed by LinkedIn hack.”

Password dumping—public display of encrypted (and later possibly cracked) lists—has become more common allowing both security professionals and thieves learn more about password habits. Thieves may automate re-using your name-password login on other sites. A short list of recent dumps from Ars:

• "More passwords dumped, this time from alleged billabong.com hack"
• "eHarmony confirmed its members' passwords were posted online, too"
• "8 million passwords leaked connected to LinkedIn, dating website"
• "Sony hacked yet again, plain text passwords, emails, DOB posted"

What these dumps reveal is that many users still choose simple passwords, a real word usually with a capital letter at the beginning and ending in a number. Cracking software try this pattern first starting with the most popular. Slightly tougher passwords use a real word with two or more capitals somewhere in the middle broken by a number or two. Better, play the license plate game to make a memorable password.

Tips

• length should be at least 8 characters
• use one or more capital letters in the middle
• use numbers, but not just at the end
• use at least one symbol if site allows
• use a password generator
• never use same password twice

Passwords are easier to remember if you type them every time instead letting your browser remember for you. Also, you may try a secure password organizer to store passwords (and other info) like 1Password available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

One annoying feature of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by Bethesda Softworks is the scenery popping into place—which is to say the high resolution textures replacing the low resolution textures—worst of all the appearance of frozen waterfalls. Sometimes it seems one has to get awfully close to the waterfall before the gorgeous animated water appears. The fish leap up the ugly block of water without a care. Setting distance sliders to maximum doesn’t help the waterfalls. If the artists had created nicer looking low-resolution waterfalls, this might not be as much a bother.

I’m not the only one concerned. Players found a solution within weeks of Skyrim’s release. Read the details on this post, “uGridsToLoad Skyrim.ini Comparisons and Explanation,” at Bethesda Softworks Forums _. The short answer is to set three keys in the skyrim.ini file under [General]:

uExterior Cell Buffer=64

uGridsToLoad=7

iPreloadSizeLimit=51380224

The forum post author came up with a formula given a uGridsToLoad value to calculate the other two, however the author admits uncertainty about what iPreloadSizeLimit actually does. Others claim uGridsToLoad isn’t related to the other two.

Trade-offs include a performance hit for higher values of x, increase in memory usage, events possibly triggering earlier than some game mechanics may expect, and unsafe to load games saved at higher x-values than playing due to corruption. So, experiment and keep x before playing or continuing a real game. If using memory-consuming mods, or high-resolution texture mods, then higher uGrids will compound stability problems due to restricted memory. If you desire the most stable game then do not alter uGrids.

As noted by Mark Coker on the Smashwords blog, “PayPal Revises Policies to Allow Legal Fiction,” PayPal has worked with the ebook community to adjust their terms covering sales of erotica content.

This is about distributing legal fiction, and always has been. As stated in my previous post, it’s about money and the law. The difference between obscene and literary value sometimes becomes debatable, but it should be the responsibility of the retailers and community to determine.

I don’t blame credit card companies for trying protect themselves, or increase their revenue by taking advantage of sales of questionably obscene material, but it’s in everyone’s best interest to find a fair way for everyone to continue business. Ebook retailers risk may increase, but I believe most of them already take responsibility and work with the community like Smashwords has shown.

In the last few weeks, PayPal has asked several ebook vendors including Smashwords and Bookstrand, to remove their erotica titles in order to continue service sparking a number of articles from sites like Huffington Post and TechCrunch. See “The PayPal Fiction Crackdown Roundup” at Dear Author for a background overview. Several bloggers and commenters have brought up morality and censorship, some asking how a payment transaction service can decide what vendors may sell. It’s not about morality or corporations trying to control others.

It’s about money and the law.

Some have brought up censorship and morality enforcement including the TechCrunch post which says, “it’s clear that PayPal thinks it can police the Internet.” The “morality police” claims (one comment and another,) seem to come from PayPal trying to categorize books with defined subject matter as noted by Mark Coker of Smashwords in an email to authors posted here that, “Their hot buttons are bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and underage erotica.” This would appear to include some mainstream and historical books, but likely this is an attempt by PayPal’s acquiring banks to differentiate obscene erotica from romance and other literature.

This has already been going on in other industries doing business on the web including porn, gambling, dieting and tobacco. These are considered by banks as high risk (see list on merchant-accounts-services.org) due to higher than normal fraud, chargebacks, or questionably legal sales. Any vendor may be considered a high risk if their chargebacks are greater than one percent, but the banks and processors categorize certain businesses as high risk from chargeback statistics or industries that may have a history of illegal activities. It’s also to a money processor’s advantage to categorize sales of questionably obscene materials or services as high risk to charge more fees.

Vendors selling merchandise or services in these high-risk areas pay extra fees as outlined by instabill.com on their Adult Merchant Account used by some porn sites. However, porn sites still have to be careful about what is depicted due to laws about distributing obscene materials.

The US law forbids distribution of obscene materials—which are not protected by the First Amendment. The Miller Test from US Supreme Court in 1973 defines obscene material as satisfying three conditions (source):

• the average person would find that the work, taken as a whole and applying contemporary community standards, appeals to the prurient interest;
• the work depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, when applying contemporary community standards; and
• the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Selena Kitt, an ebook publisher of Excessica and erotica author, makes the point on her blog that PayPal would rather not pay for high-risk accounts, and so must comply. In her search for an alternative, Selena Kitt found out that Amazon Payments have a similar rule against the sale of “‘sexually explicit materials.’” In a comment of the TechCrunch post, she continues saying that she has tried many other merchant accounts for credit card processing, including those specializing in porn sites, and turned down for “‘illegal activity.’”

Why now? PayPal has been processing transactions from these vendors for years, likely under the assumption that none of the ebooks being sold were obscene and the vendors doing their due diligence to remove obscene ebooks. Now they know, or they believe there is a risk. There is no attempt at policing the internet here. PayPal is following terms of service with banks to reduce risk.

The rising success of erotica authors has captured the attention of credit card companies that don’t want to risk becoming involved in accepting payments for (questionably) illegal sales. Ebooks containing rape, incest, or bestiality is not a problem as long as the work as a whole is considered artistic, scientific, or has literary value. Vendors like Smashwords and Excessica need to fight showing that they take care in removing purely obscene materials, and even then they may still find themselves in a high-risk category without PayPal services due to varying views on what is considered to have no literary or artistic merit. The banks and credit cards still want their fees. If there is enough profit in erotica literature, then someone will find a way to continue selling likely to come with higher fees. After all, it’s about money.

Note: I don’t read erotica, I have no knowledge if any of these vendors have ever sold obscene ebooks, and I’m not a legal expert. I think it’s fair to say there is a perceived risk of distributing obscene materials—no different than any other adult entertainment—whether that perception is based on law or monetary gain.

Not your everyday vampire tale, this time-twisted journey explores an intimate connection between a killer with a thirst for blood and her prey with a taste for memories.

Life is a memory, and Steve Reynolds starts his life caught in the middle of a political issue involving a rare venom used as a drug. Kandy, a professional killer, helps him find his way through the time-shifting shadows of his life and into hers. Haunted by wraiths from his past, Steve puts his past together discovering not all of his memories belong to him.

Kandy Fangs ebook novella is available for free.

Where to Find

Download in your preferred format from Smashwords.

Novella vs Serial

At about 43,000 words, the novella is slightly longer than the serialized version found at www.KandyFangs.com. Besides polishing, the novella includes a few longer scenes with more details. I edited the two versions separately since the serial requires different breaks. The novella has 14 chapters compared to 27 episodes in the serial.