Interesting Links for 13-12-2014

[andrewducker]

• Beyond the Flynn Effect (A fascinating, deep, look into where it comes from, and what it means)
  (tags: intelligence iq psychology environment education genetics )
• Beware people who quote a single study (and what we can learn about minimum wages)
  (tags: research minimumwage )
• Mind-Bending Placemat Mimics Einstein's Space-Time Fabric Theory
  (tags:

Comments

[bart_calendar]

This May is going to be an interesting test of if piracy can be reduced or not.

In America when the new season of game of thrones comes out people will be able to buy it per episode from HBO. Meanwhile people in the rest of the world won't.

That should give us good test data - because we'll be able to look at America as a control group to see if pirating of Game Of Thrones there becomes proportionally less than the pirating of it in other countries where the on demand paid viewing isn't offered. And we already have data of how much it was pirated over the past three years to compare it to.

[bart_calendar]

(A particularly good control since HBO allows torrenting of game of thrones, so it's a case where torrenting isn't illegal.)

[andrewducker]

Since when does HBO allow torrenting???

[bart_calendar]

Last year they said that in the case of GOT they allow torrenting because they did the math and realized that torrenting was leading to enough increased GOT box set and merch sales that it made up for any loses.

[andrewducker]

I can't find anything on that. Any chance you can dig up a link?

[bart_calendar]

Searching now.

I did a post about it at the time because I thought it was incredibly smart thinking on their part.

[bart_calendar]

http://www.businessinsider.com/time-warner-ceo-people-pirating-game-of-thrones-is-better-than-an-emmy-for-hbo-2013-8?IR=T

[andrewducker]

Aah, yes, I remember them saying that they thought it was awesome that they were so popular on the torrents sites.

I thought you meant they'd actually given permission, which confused me!

[kalimac]

He said "allows", so I too thought that's what he meant.

[andrewducker]

Yeah.

not that it's easy to stop people from torrenting things!

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it'll be fascinating to see whether people are willing to pay for it.