An executive producer who wants to cut costs has only two choice curbs: water and hair. Those are the most expensive things to replicate accurately via animation. It’s no mistake that the characters in Minions, the most profitable movie ever made by Universal, are virtually bald and don’t seem to spend much time in the pool.
Animation, as with all formulaic and saccharine film genres, tends to bring out Hollywood’s blockbuster gambling addiction. The perverse incentives of the format means that fortune favours the spendthrift — the bigger the budget, the bigger the windfall.“In some ways, a $90 million movie is more risky than a $150 million one,” Creutz said.
This means that when animated films flop, they flop hard. In fourth quarter 2013, DreamWorks took an $87 million writedown on Rise of the Guardians. Without the charge, the studio would have posted a small profit in the period, rather than an $83 million loss. A few months later, it had to take a $57 million writedown on Mr. Peabody and Sherman, a film that cost $145 million to make and far more to market.
An executive producer who wants to cut costs has only two choice curbs: water and hair. Those are the most expensive things to replicate accurately via animation. It’s no mistake that the characters in Minions, the most profitable movie ever made by Universal, are virtually bald and don’t seem to spend much time in the pool.
Animation, as with all formulaic and saccharine film genres, tends to bring out Hollywood’s blockbuster gambling addiction. The perverse incentives of the format means that fortune favours the spendthrift — the bigger the budget, the bigger the windfall.
(Via Marginal Revolution.)“In some ways, a $90 million movie is more risky than a $150 million one,” Creutz said.
An executive producer who wants to cut costs has only two choice curbs: water and hair. Those are the most expensive things to replicate accurately via animation. It’s no mistake that the characters in Minions, the most profitable movie ever made by Universal, are virtually bald and don’t seem to spend much time in the pool.
Animation, as with all formulaic and saccharine film genres, tends to bring out Hollywood’s blockbuster gambling addiction. The perverse incentives of the format means that fortune favours the spendthrift — the bigger the budget, the bigger the windfall.“In some ways, a $90 million movie is more risky than a $150 million one,” Creutz said.
This means that when animated films flop, they flop hard. In fourth quarter 2013, DreamWorks took an $87 million writedown on Rise of the Guardians. Without the charge, the studio would have posted a small profit in the period, rather than an $83 million loss. A few months later, it had to take a $57 million writedown on Mr. Peabody and Sherman, a film that cost $145 million to make and far more to market.
An executive producer who wants to cut costs has only two choice curbs: water and hair. Those are the most expensive things to replicate accurately via animation. It’s no mistake that the characters in Minions, the most profitable movie ever made by Universal, are virtually bald and don’t seem to spend much time in the pool.
Animation, as with all formulaic and saccharine film genres, tends to bring out Hollywood’s blockbuster gambling addiction. The perverse incentives of the format means that fortune favours the spendthrift — the bigger the budget, the bigger the windfall.“In some ways, a $90 million movie is more risky than a $150 million one,” Creutz said.
This means that when animated films flop, they flop hard. In fourth quarter 2013, DreamWorks took an $87 million writedown on Rise of the Guardians. Without the charge, the studio would have posted a small profit in the period, rather than an $83 million loss. A few months later, it had to take a $57 million writedown on Mr. Peabody and Sherman, a film that cost $145 million to make and far more to market.
You may not agree with everything in this article, from the prognostications to the prescriptions. Regardless of the details, though, a transition of this kind seems increasingly inevitable.
One thing that the author misses is that people work for more than just income - they work for dignity and a sense of accomplishment. Part of any future vision needs to include the mechanisms for people to obtain these values as well. My suggestion/prediction is a sort of "craft-everything gift economy." What if you occupied your time competing for bragging rights as the maker of the best custom X in your neighborhood, and you *gave it away*?
Somebody worked pretty hard to make the acronym work. (Via H.R.)A submarine’s periscope is a useful reconnaissance tool, but it puts the vessel at risk since it can only be used when the sub surfaces. As an alternative, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have created a waterproof drone that can float up from the murky depths and then take to the skies to provide an aerial view.Named the CRACUNS (Corrosion Resistant Aerial Covert Unmanned Nautical System) the waterproof drone could be mounted to the outside of a submarine and only deployed as needed for additional intelligence gathering—without putting the billion dollar vessel at risk.
Google's self-driving car knows how to run yellow lights.
But unlike regular humans, it doesn't have to guess whether it'll beat the countdown. Instead, it turns what for many of us is a split-second decision based on experience and guts into a heavily calculated dance of probability, speed and trajectory. Roughly 230 feet before it hits an intersection, it scans the light with its cameras and, based on the thousands of other data points it's tracking in its surroundings, the car will make the right call.
This anthology includes 120 authors—who contributed 230 works totaling approximately 1.1 MILLION words of fiction. These pieces all originally appeared in 2014, 2015, or 2016 from writers who are new professionals to the SFF field, and they represent a breathtaking range of work from the next generation of speculative storytelling.Click through to get the free download link. (Available for free until March 31, 2016.)
All of these authors are eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2016. We hope you’ll use this anthology as a guide in nominating for that award as well as a way of exploring many vibrant new voices in the genre.
I'm hoping it's the Lost Ark! (Via H.R.)Late last year, radar scans at King Tut’s tomb revealed the possible presence of a secret chamber. A more detailed analysis of this data shows not just the presence of a hidden room—but also unidentified objects that are comprised of metal and organic materials.As reported in National Geographic, the announcement was made earlier today at a press conference in Cairo, where Egyptian antiquities minister Mamdouh Eldamaty said, “It could be the discovery of the century.”
[A] team of six microrobots, weighing just 3.5 ounces in total, could pull a car weighing 3,900 pounds... Their new demonstration is the functional equivalent of a team of six humans moving a weight equivalent to that of an Eiffel Tower and three Statues of Liberty, Mr. Christensen said. The car is the one he uses for commuting to campus. Part of the magic is the use of a special adhesive that was inspired by gecko toes.Demonstration video:
Pizza Hut is partnering with acclaimed mathematical genius John H. Conway, distinguished professor of pure and applied mathematics emeritus, Princeton University.
Conway has channeled his mathematical genius into writing three math problems varying in level of difficulty from high school to Ph.D. level. These word problems will be released right here on the Hut Life Blog on National Pi Day, Monday, March 14th, 2016. The problems will be up by 8 am Eastern Time, and all of the great minds of the Internet will have the chance to solve them and the chance to win 3.14 years of FREE pizza (awarded in Pizza Hut® gift cards).
“Pi may be irrational, but free pizza is anything but,” added Conway, who is profiled in the 2015 book, Genius at Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway. “I’m eager to challenge America with these problems and find the next great pizza-loving mathematician that can solve them.”
[A]nother young American had better luck during the U.S. Selective Service System's Vietnam War draft lottery, according to Prerau.And don't forget to watch the classic snarky CGP Grey video:
Each birth date was randomly selected and assigned a draft order in which young men were called to service... “Based on the day this guy was born, he had a low number and was very likely to be drafted,” Prerau says.
“But he was born just after midnight. So he went to court claiming that in his state he was born under standard time, which would have been an hour earlier. That would mean his birth occurred before midnight and on a different day—which just happened to have a much higher lottery number. The courts agreed that he was right and he actually managed to avoid the draft in that way.”
[The] downtown’s U.S. Bank Tower—the tallest building on the West Coast—will soon feature a glass slide that takes daredevil patrons from the 70th to the 69th floor. The slide, appropriately named "Skyslide," will be suspended 1,000 feet above the city and will cost $8 a pop.
Expert poker players often take advantage of a skill they call table feel: an ability to read the facial expressions and other unconscious “tells” exhibited by their opponents. Bridge players rely on table feel, too, but in bridge not all tells can be exploited legally by all players. If one of my opponents hesitates during the bidding or the play, I’m allowed to draw conclusions from the hesitation—but if my partner hesitates I’m not.
What’s more, if I seem to have taken advantage of information that I wasn’t authorized to know, my opponents can summon the tournament director and seek an adjusted result for the hand we just played.
Principled players do their best to ignore their partner and play at a consistent tempo, in order to avoid exchanging unauthorized information—and, if they do end up noticing something they shouldn’t have noticed, they go out of their way not to exploit it. Unprincipled players consciously take advantage of such information. And, occasionally, they go a great deal further than that...
A photo-op with Premier Kathleen Wynne at a Toronto high school Tuesday morning is creating quite a social media stir — and it only takes a quick glance to figure out why.
Wynne was at Jarvis Collegiate Institute with Reza Moridi, minister of training, colleges and universities, to talk about the province's plan to offer a new grant for low-income college and university students.
But a quick photo-op with science students running an experiment involving dish soap didn't end up with the best results....
Pink blob takes over @Kathleen_Wynne's visit to Jarvis Collegiate. #onpoli pic.twitter.com/FXoG0Hf9OK— Robert Benzie (@robertbenzie) March 1, 2016
With amazing super slow-motion footage of a match head starting to burn as a backdrop, this video explains the chemical reactions involved in lighting a match.
Carrie Fisher has been getting a lot more attention lately thanks to the return of Star Wars last year, and so far she’s been a total champ. On Friday IBM released a new Watson commercial starring Fisher as a robot therapist, and she's probably one of the only people who could make the sketch work.
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