Kuiper

* 2014 class lectures (via BYU English dept): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRO9W1Nmh6clZP-IAhMeM...

* 2016 class lectures (via Camera Panda): http://brandonsanderson.com/2016-sanderson-lectures/

He also delivered lectures at JordanCon in 2010 and 2011. I frequently recommend his "description and viewpoint" lecture as the best tool for competent non-fiction writers to understand what separates the skill of fiction writing from non-fiction writing.

* JordanCon 2010: description and viewpoint https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3A1F631BCD668EDF

* JordanCon 2010: plotting https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB2AB4CCF96ECB552

* JordanCon 2011: sanderson's second law of magic systems https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF9F2E7291F6FBFEB

Brandon Sanderson is also one of the hosts on the weekly Writing Excuses podcast: http://writingexcuses.com/

This is something that I noticed as a significant problem when living in the freshman dorms during undergrad. You had a lot of smart kids who spent most of the school day bored, and they spend most of the school day reading novels in class before going home to spend 40+ hours a week playing video games or browsing reddit, all while maintaining perfect grades and never having to ask for help from teachers or peers.

Then, they get to college where they encounter material that actually challenges them, but they're still in the habit of spending the hours of 3 PM to 11 PM playing World of Warcraft or League of Legends, and when they start falling behind they're still in the mindset of "I'm the smart kid, I shouldn't need to ask for help." You have kids who were high school valedictorians who end up failing classes during undergrad because they never learned how to properly function in a challenging academic environment. It can be quite a shock to transition from an environment where you might be in the 99th percentile of performers (top marks without having to try hard) to be one where you may not even be in the top 50% and actually need to put in more effort than your peers.

It's basically an interest-free loan which doesn't need to be paid back if the project is a failure (i.e. fails to "earn out" its advance). Quite generous, assuming Valve isn't taking any more than their usual cut of the Steam revenue as part of the arrangements.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/life-expectancy-for-les...

Because Colemak has more overlap with the QWERTY keyboard, the learning curve is much more gentle; it took me about 2 weeks to get up to around 50% of my old QWERTY WPM, and probably less than 3 months to get where I felt I could match my old WPM. By 1 month in I felt that I was efficient enough with Colemak that it was worth it to type a bit slower in exchange for the increase in comfort it afforded.

I've found that the biggest inefficiency that came with the transition was not physical, but mental. During the early weeks of learning the new layout, I needed to actually devote some conscious thought to what my fingers are doing, meaning that those brain cycles couldn't be used to process what I was about to type next, leading to a process where I frequently needed to pause and think about what I was typing, whereas it's typically more continuous and interruption-free as my fingers try to keep up with my brain. During the first few weeks of transitioning, I used Colemak only for "clerical" tasks like writing emails and some documentation I was working on at the time, and not for coding.

It didn’t used to be like this. Using an OS used to be hard work. When things went wrong you had to dive in and get dirty to fix things. You learned about file systems and registry settings and drivers for your hardware. Not any more.

In other words, people used to be technically literate because they had to be. Now, it's possible to utilize technology without knowing how it works. Think for a moment about what that means.

This sounds very much like a case of a species evolving to meet its own (lack of) need. People aren't tech literate because you don't need to be tech literate to check your email on an iPad, just like I'm not very proficient in spear hunting because being able to hunt a wild animal is no longer necessary to feed myself.

Not everyone needs to be good at everything, and mastering skills has an opportunity cost. Yes, it would be nice if every teenager could spend the hours required to know how to install Linux and work around the Linux desktop environment, but how many hours would that take them? Every hour that they spend learning how to install and use Linux is one hour less that they have to spend on guitar lessons, or learning a foreign language, or automotive repair, or oratory practice, or whatever other pursuits they might choose to invest themselves in.

More than this, I think that in part it's necessary to allow the kids to try and fail before assisting them. I'm not sure that showing and explaining to them how to perform a task from start to finish is much more effective than solving the problem behind a closed door, at least in terms of retention. What's really effective is if they can make an attempt to solve the issue, and then get the solution. Unfortunately, my experience is that not very many parents take this approach, because it includes failure as part of the learning process--and not many parents like to watch their kids fail. I've even seen some parents condemned for telling their kids to go and try it themselves before they provide help--some parents regard this as some kind of neglect.

The goal is to have the kid get 90% of the way there (or however close they're capable) before closing the gap and assisting them with the remaining 10% that they aren't able to get on their own. Part of the issue is that in the eye of the learner (and an observer) is that 0% of the way there and 90% of the way there feel the same. Both of them amount to "I can't do it and had to ask for help." But if you've gotten 90% of the way to a solution yourself, it's much easier to understand when the final (and hardest) 10% is demonstrated for you, and odds are you'll retain at least part of that. Whereas if 100% of the task is done for you, you'll frequently retain none of the solution, even if the solution is accompanied by a lengthy explanation.

In school, I found that I learned most effectively when I attempted the assigned homework before the related material was covered in class. I tried, I failed at a lot of things, and when the lecture came up, I knew what information to look for and what questions to ask. Failure is a critical part of the learning process--it's unfortunate that many people try to avoid failure rather than embrace it.

I see plenty of opportunities for targeted advertising on 4chan. Obviously, it's hard to have targeted advertising on the larger boards for subjects like "random" and "video games," but you can make pretty safe assumptions about the demographics for other smaller hobby-centric boards; the cosplay & EGL board is mostly populated with young women who are into dressing up and going to conventions, the "traditional gaming" board is mostly (young) adult males who are into tabletop games like D&D and Warhammer 40k or trading card games like Magic: The Gathering.

I mention these two boards specifically because I think that they represent valuable demographics. The cosplay & EGL board of 4chan is where people go to talk about the dress that they just spent $300 on (and that's on the low end--for some of those girls, $300 is what they'll spend on cosmetics seasonally). By the same token, tabletop games and trading card games can be big cash sinks, and there are plenty examples of people who spend hundreds of dollars per month on these hobbies.

Could be related to a ruling by the European Court of Justice last year, by which "An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences" http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012...

This could also lead to permanent license transfers being possible (possibly enabled via Steam's existng community marketplace, where Steam takes a cut of the sale of virtual goods--and perhaps more advantageous for Steam, sellers on Steam's community market don't get cash; they get credit that can only be used on Steam).

Isn't that the intent? Rob Rhinehart (creator) lived for a period of one month eating Soylent and nothing else. My understanding is that Soylent is intended to be a meal replacement, not a supplement of some kind.

If you're talking about prescription lenses, the answer to your question is yes. Glass is designed to be modular, and Glass is intended to accommodate those who wear conventional glasses for vision correction, giving them the option to use glass with their prescription lenses.

Then the 1990's happened, and now it doesn't seem like there's as much of a desire to emulate the superficial elements of Japanese business culture. That being said, I don't think that eastern-style bowing has ever been commonplace for western business environments.

Depends on the venue and the artist. There are some artists that I like to see live because they're good at creating high-energy environment, and the endorphin release I get from singing along is part of that high-energy environment. Other musical performances I attend based on my appreciation of the music and less the act. Generally speaking, if I don't have a seat, there's a good chance that I'm going to spend most of the set singing.

>The guy that stole $9000 from me? My fault. I should have verified his claims.

which could also take the form of:

>My domestic partner abuses me physically? My fault. I shouldn't have entered a relationship with this abusive person, and should have removed myself from the relationship before it escalated to physical violence.

In this manner, you would acknowledge the role that the abusive partner played in the violence, but also acknowledge the steps that you could have taken to prevent being the target of violence.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19148146

The other benefit of the homebrew cabinet is that it allows you to run any console game you please. Marvel vs Cacpom 3, one of the two most popular fighting games in North America, is actually home console only--there's no official cabinet, so homebrew is the only way to go if you want an arcade setup.

I can't directly disagree with your statement that they "actually put quite a bit of work into it," because they did produce new 3D assets, which is a non-trivial task, and the localization had to be done from scratch since it was the first time Final Fantasy III had ever been released outside Japan. However, it certainly didn't feel like a game that that got a lot of tender loving care; it felt like a cash grab predicated on the assumption that people would buy anything tied to the Final Fantasy brand.

Actually, seems more like pitching my favorite book or movie to friends when they're over for dinner--which I do already. If I have a blog where I discuss fantasy novels, it almost seems like a courtesy to readers to link them to where they can buy the products I am talking about. There are a lot of times when I find myself linking people to Amazon product pages even though I'm not part of the affiliate program. (When a friend asks me what earbuds he should buy, giving him a link seems a lot more reliable than giving him a product name like "AKG K271 MK II" and trusting that the message won't get lost in translation as he retypes it into his search bar.)

The company that this really brings to mind is DuckDuckGo. They're competing for the search market with Google and Microsoft--two of the biggest competitors you could possibly face. But search is huge and if you can claim even 0.1% of that market, you've got more than enough users to justify your existence.

Actually, Bitcoin lacks one of the most key attributes of precious metals: precious metals have inherent value. Even if gold isn't useful as a medium of exchange, gold is still useful and has value because it has practical applications due to its high conductivity and corrosion resistance. Although gold's value is highly inflated due to speculation, gold still has a "minimum value" due to its utility in the area of electronics. If everyone one day decided "gold investment is stupid" and began dumping it, there would still be demand for gold due to the electronics market. Ditto for silver and platinum. These metals have value because you can do things with them. There will always be demand for these things, just as there will always be demand for iron, copper, and other non-precious metals.

Bitcoin is like currency in that it only has value because a group of people have collectively decided that it has value. Bitcoin's value is based on rarity, and the only thing that makes it different from traditional currency is that its rarity is guaranteed algorithmically, rather than by a centralized government.

Besides the productivity boost I get from my accountability partner, the act of writing out the email (which condenses the scope of my work for that evening into a few sentences) focuses my attention on whatever it is I'm working on, and leaves me with something to chew on in the back of my mind when the afternoon is growing late. By the end of the work day I'm already eager to hit the ground running.

Several key things regarding courtesy and etiquette displayed to email buddies: Firstly, the emails are targeted; I'm emailing people because I genuinely believe they are interested in what I'm working on. These people can be colleagues, fellow hobbyists, and students I've mentored. If I find myself working on a project and have no one that I feel would be interested in it, it's a sign of one of two things: either I need to expand my social network, or perhaps the thing I'm working on isn’t really such a good use of my time.

Secondly, I don't take too much of their time. I expect them to spend maybe 10 minutes of their attention on the correspondence, and if they spend more time than that it's because they were interested enough in what I was doing to spend more time scrutinizing it. (It helps that my projects can usually be presented visually, with a brief series of photographs that require very little effort to digest.) I don't spend every night working on projects, and I usually have 2-3 things that I’m working on at any given time, so each person I maintain contact with gets an average of one email per week.

If you've never browsed Kickstarter, your perception of Kickstarter success rates is probably colored even further by the fact that hearing about a Kickstarter outside of Kickstarter (on an aggregate such as reddit, HN, etc) is social proof and that itself is a symptom of success.

For a similar exercise, try checking the HN new queue. Lots of submissions fail to get even a single upvote; you just never see them.

If anything, I'd say that 44% successfully funded seems amazingly high. Much fewer than 44% of Kickstarter projects I've viewed actually deserved to be funded, in my opinion. Then again, this perception is likely skewed by the fact that I've spent a disproportionate amount of time in the games category, which seems to be plagued by "everyone wants to be a game dev without knowing how to code" syndrome.

This sounds a lot like the subreddit system.

But there are crimes that are determined by intent. For example, providing incorrect information is not inherently criminal, but knowingly providing incorrect information with the intent of personal gain is considered fraud, which is a crime.