How The Times decides who gets an obituary.

Scott Simon, the NPR reporter who live-tweeted his mother’s death during her last days and hours.

The Living Headstone, for example, attaches or engraves a QR code to a headstone, which is then readable by smartphone and connected to a unique, personalized online memorial page. This digital space is “similar to a personal Facebook page,” where, a “Living Headstone” archive site contains information you and friends can add about your loved one,

In my head, I imagine that when I’m dead, when I can no longer defend my records or explain them, the periodicals will stay forever, like they did in the reading room at the Philadelphia Main Library, and those reviews will become the final word on the things that I’ve created.

First, a third party can delete the account, either independently if she or he has the password or by requesting that Facebook remove the account, a process that requires proof, such as a death certificate and evidence of the requestor’s immediate relationship to the deceased.