Paying Attention: Wired has a new post about the inevitability of the economic model for electronics: what once was expensive soon becomes cheap. In this case, it’s the 4K flat screen, specifically the 4K flatscreen from Vizio. Vizio has always been a company that provides a big bang for the buck. They’re not afraid of […]
Monthly Archives: April 2016
The Art of the Movie Trailer: Snowden
Paying Attention: Oliver Stone doesn’t do safe movies. Never has. Never will. From Platoon to JFK to Born on the Fourth of July, he has pushed and prodded truth and fiction into continuously compelling narratives. His latest is Snowden, a film about the most famous hacker in modern times. Agree or disagree, makes no difference. […]
Sunshine from Eyore
“It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine….”
Nation Building
Press Clippings: For more than a decade, American Politicians have used the term “nation building” to imply a form of outside assistance to a “failed state” that would help to rebuild it. Sometimes this assistance was delivery by the military, after a despotic regime was deposed; sometimes the aid came in the form of a […]
Doves Cry
Embed from Getty Images Transitions: Prince (1958-2016). Prince Rogers Nelson, know to his fans throughout the world as Prince (when he wasn’t going by the title of “the artist formerly known as Prince”) was found unconscious in an elevator at his Paisley Park estate/recording studio complex outside Minneapolis today. Attempts to revive him failed; […]
Think Like Google
Paying Attention: It’s complicated. You probably use Google everyday, but do you spend a lot of time sorting out how Google finds out all that neat info you requested (hint–it has to do with distributed computing across a zillion platforms using proprietary software, not just proprietary algorithms). What if we told you that the language […]
Spartans and the enemy
“The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they….”
The Perfect Investment Manager: Quantitative. Unemotional. Never Sleeps.
Paying Attention: Is your hedge fund (or mutual fund) being managed by a robot? If so, lucky boy. The bots have a couple of advantages over the Masters in Applied Math grads from Hopkins who used to look after your portolio. To those who thought that robots couldn’t take over their Portfolio Manager position on […]
How to bring an old laptop back to life
Paying Attention: If you have one computer, there’s a good chance you have more than one: specifically an old laptop that’s past it’s OS life. It happens. No matter how much you update, no matter how much you upgrade, sooner or later you reach a point where that once-treasured-and-essential-laptop can no longer take another round of […]
Bob Hope on Golf
“If you think golf is relaxing, you’re not playing it the right way….”