hjkl's comments

Not sure how how legit it is, but I saw there was a follow up study where researchers couldn’t reproduce the deliberate practice finding to the degree the original researchers did: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.190327

Been working on a web service to convert JS apps to PWAs and host them: https://www.superweb.app

Hoping that it makes it easier for folks to create native-like apps, especially games.

I really hope this site works out. Posted a few of my films:

http://www.filmbreak.com/projects/framed-baby-photos

http://www.filmbreak.com/projects/strange-human-custom

http://www.filmbreak.com/projects/signatures

Thanks for posting the Delayed Gratification link. Sounds like a great idea.

Can Apple do anything other than lose its shine? Is it possible for it to get shinier? I mean, it already has the world's highest market cap and is revered in a way the subsequent next highest market cap companies aren't (Exxon, MS, Wal-mart).

It's like a basketball player who makes 100 free throws in a row, misses a couple, and people wonder what the hell happened to him/her.

The argument isn't that success is due entirely to luck. It's that you'll never know how much of that success is due to luck. It may be a lot or it may be a little.

But then do people overestimate the impact of their own influence? Would it benefit themselves/the world to come to grips with randomness?

I'm surprised by how defensive people can get about their own success. It seems to me that you can never know if your success was due to your own hard work or some lucky breaks (or, more probably, a combination of both to which you'll never know the balance).

It reminds me of the story about thousands of people flipping coins. Out of those thousands of people, some of them are going to flip a long string of heads. Does that mean that those people are "good" at flipping heads? Is someone who flips a string of tails "bad" at flipping heads?

"It will likely be a good-looking, entertaining disaster..."

If it's good-looking and entertaining, I don't see how it can also be a disaster. My impression is that the writer is using "disaster" and "not factually accurate" interchangeably.

Anybody have an opinion on ctrlp vs LustyExplorer? http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1890

"...HDCP encryption, a newer part of the HDMI standard..."

I don't think that's true.

My understanding is that HDCP encryption has been around for as long as HDMI has been around. For example, Blu-ray discs/players use HDCP to encrypt their content.

It seems strange that these DVR boxes don't support HDCP. Maybe some of the heat should be directed towards DirecTV for using such non-compliant hardware.

>Think of it as "Moneyball for movies" -- that is, what types of successful film productions does Hollywood tend to undervalue in favor of large, expensive (and tremendously risky) blockbuster attempts?

Thing is, this has been done, and the results probably aren't what you want to hear. Hollywood actually produces fewer family and broad-appeal genre films than the market can handle. (Check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Economics-Uncertainty-Routle... )

The reason for this mismatch between what the market can handle vs. what actually gets made is that Hollywood insiders actually do want to make dramas aimed at adults, which have a much smaller market than, say, animated kids' movies.

I'm interested in the rent vs. buy thing too, so here are some of my thoughts:

>What if I hate the place and want to move away from it? Then a high demand for housing would play in my favor.

You'd still have to sell your house, which I've heard is rarely easy. There is time/money cost associated with selling the house (including repairs, real estate agents, etc.).

>What if I move to another city? Then it’d be good if I could rent it out easily, ideally making a profit with it or at least not losing money.

You'd still have to manage the rental property or pay someone to do that. This is another time/money cost.

> What if prices go down dramatically? Then I’d be stuck with the place, since I’d lose money by selling it. So I need to really like the place, or be able to make enough money by renting it to others.

You also have to be able to absorb any catastrophes to your financial situation. If you all-of-a-sudden couldn't afford your mortgage, you're still on the hook for it. If you were renting, you could just move somewhere cheaper (less the costs of the move).

I didn't see maintenance/repairs factored into the cost of buying a home. If the water heater dies, that's going to be a major expense. Same with paint jobs, pipe repairs, acts of god, etc. Might be worth considering what these factors would do to the math.

Finally, there's the opportunity cost. If you put a 60€ (20%) down payment on €300k, that money is now tied up in your house. If you had rented, you could have put that money towards another type of investment that could potentially earn you more money or at least be more liquid.

I'm a guy who went to school for a BA in Film/Digital Media and a BS in Mechanical Engineering. I now work as a software engineer. It is my opinion that my BA in film to did not develop any more "soft skills" than my engineering degree.

The implication in this article is that you either think like an engineer or you think like... I don't know, someone who studied liberal arts? I think this is a false dichotomy. Engineers can understand customers just as well as someone who studied film/anthropology/politics/whatever.

I loved Black Swan for the same reasons. I also read "Hollywood Economics: How extreme uncertainty shapes the film industry," which reads like an applied version of the Black Swan in relation to the film industry.

Some context: this was a DeCal class which is run by students.

From the DeCal website: "DeCal is a student-run democratic education program at the UC Berkeley - here, students create and facilitate their own classes on a variety of (often unorthodox) subjects."

It does seem unfair to have to respond to an inflammatory anecdotal op-ed with a reasoned non-anecdotal argument, but I think that's the burden of a good faith response.

In that respect, I think Michael Fleisher's background is a good indicator that his piece has a bias, but pointing it out doesn't necessarily negate what he wrote.

The original WSJ article struck me as disingenuous, but this article seems to just go the ad hominem route.

Cuban makes the point that he only had to be "right" once and then goes on to express his annoyance with people who refer to him as lucky. But how does he know that he was "right" rather than lucky? Isn't it possible that he could have been both right and lucky?

I don't mean to say he didn't work hard or doesn't deserve what he's earned, but discipline and hard work don't generally lead to billions of dollars like they did in his case. It seems more likely to me that luck played a significant role in his (extreme) success, and determining the influence of his being right compared to the influence of his being lucky is probably impossible.

This comic rings mostly true for me, but I disagree a bit with the claim that information in 1984 was restricted; Good information was hard to find, but if I recall correctly, bad information was abundant.

For example, even when Winston begins to realize that he's being fed B.S. information by the government, the book he reads for "real" information is also (probably) filled with lies. I find this point to be especially poignant today as some niche alternative news outlets (such as conspiracy theory web sites) are as inaccurate as the outlets they seek to criticize.