January 2012
The Zynga Abyss - The Atlantic →
“I’ll reiterate this in plainer language, just in case the quote wasn’t clear: Detsaridis said that one of the most compelling parts of playing Zynga’s games is deciding when and how to spam your friends with reminders to play Zynga’s games.”
Best explanation I've ever seen of why... →
Best part:
“I continue, “if you can commit to walking 16 hours a day, we can make up the difference! It will be hard, but this is crunch time. Suck it up!” My friend yells back, “I’m not the one who told our friends we’d make it by Sunday in the first place! Don’t blame me for this!”
Love it.
Why Not Try An Infinity-Day Window? →
The 56 day window is just the latest of the stupid moves made by Hollywood. I’ve learned to live with these arbitrary windows with my subscription to Netflix, appreciating new stuff whenever it does finally get on there but not everyone has that kind of patience.
I have plenty of friends who were once hardcore music piraters who now buy music legit from Apple/Amazon because it’s...
How Much Do Music and Movie Piracy Really Hurt the... →
parislemon:
Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman of Freakonomics discuss the claims that piracy leads to $250 billion a year in loses and 750,000 American jobs lost:
The good news is that the numbers are wrong — as this post by the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez explains. In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced...
venomous porridge: The Unprecedented Audacity of... →
dwineman:
Apple just released iBooks Author, a free Mac app for creating digital books for the new version of iBooks. I haven’t played with it much, but so far it looks like a very good tool. However, a curious thing happens when you go to export your work in iBooks format:
This restriction — that…
“I want them to remember that lawmakers and lobbyists who don’t understand the...”
– Erik Martin, reddit general manager, telling us what he thinks you should take away from today’s Internet blackouts. (via newsweek)
How to Land Your Kid in Therapy →
By trying to spare our children the discomfort of failure and unhappiness by artificially propping up their self-esteem and self-worth, are we doing more harm than good? A very interesting article.
“The clinical focus had always been on how the lack of parental attunement affects the child. It never occurred to any of us to ask, what if the parents are too attuned? What happens to those...
“I talked with Nancy Pelosi about SOPA the other day, and she said that the...”
– Tim (via brycedotvc)
Which is better for users, scrolling or clicking? →
“Nowadays, a candidate must believe not just some but all of the following...”
– American politics: The right Republican | The Economist (via fillup)
The Cordray Crisis →
“This latest episode over the Cordray appointment may be the most extreme example. But it’s surely not the final example.
It is instead an ominous milestone in the deterioration of the US political system into ever more intense acrimony and paralysis.”
“Taking vacation at Red Frog is encouraged (and even celebrated). And it’s not...”
– Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days
Some look at business management techniques like this and think they are pipe dreams or flat out silly. I disagree: I think it’s a shift in our culture and a necessary one. Just as sales commissions train salespeople to focus on the wrong results, so do...
Revisiting my 2011 resolutions and my 2012 edition
Since it’s newly 2012, I felt it was time to revisit my 2011 resolutions (found here: http://johanlieu.com/post/2548438695/my-new-years-resolutions-for-2011), see if I kept them and grade myself like I said I would (I said I would do it on a monthly basis, but I didn’t, so you can probably guess how well this going to go for me):
Resolution #1:
1. I am going to commit to writing one...