Ask HN: What's it like getting better at meditation? - <AUTHOR> What does the path to mastery look like for meditation? <comment><USER2> I never got anywhere near a path to actual mastery, but I did enough concentration meditation to go into the mind states where I felt like oh, this is what it's about.

At first, meditation was all about just coping with boredom and muscle pain (from sitting still) and trying to return to the breath while thoughts constantly kept emerging. This was not especially fun, but the sheer difficulty of just sitting still seemed to make it a good challenge, like I clearly had a lot to learn.

Even during this phase I usually felt better and more clear after meditation, so I liked doing it even though it wasn't really satisfying in the moment.

Then over months I started to see what it means to let go of everything except the focus on the meditation object, usually the breath but I also found it very interesting to meditate on the visual appearance of a small unicolored circle ("kasina").

And I learned about jhana/dhyana practice which really inspired me to take concentration seriously. Also I discovered the benefits for meditation of just being nice to people and animals and maintaining a good mood, clean house, etc—reducing ambient stress and "bad karma."

Eventually I started to actually get into those jhana states. It starts by getting very relaxed and concentrated and then starting to notice how there are some subtle pleasant sensations around your bodily perception, maybe your belly or palms or somewhere; then you shift your concentration to take that pleasure as its object, which causes it to increase and spread. It's no exaggeration that this can be a state of pervasive sensory pleasure, like your whole body is full of a kind of fizzy happiness. It's easy to get so excited that you fall out of the state, so the practice becomes to stay calm within it. And then the fizziness subsides into a more calm pleasure, and then it becomes not even really pleasure but just contentment like a peaceful lake without wind.

By the way concentration in these contexts shouldn't be understood as a kind of forceful and strained effort, rather the opposite. But you probably just have to learn through trial and error. I'd try to write more descriptively but it would probably get long and tedious.

<comment><USER3> I also practice concentrative meditation and the sensations just keep on increasing as you keep walking on the path. Seems like one is just full of these sensations. As per yogic texts, we have three bodies [0] comprising of five sheeths. One of the sheaths is called pranik (energy).

I alternate between sound (mantra) and form, and sometimes formless as well [1].

Ke to do concentrative meditation can be summed up in one line (taken from [2]) "Exert when relaxed and relax when exerted."

As one walks the path, one invariably goes through these nine states of awareness: [http://omswami.com/2015/02/nine-states- awareness.html](http://omswami.com/2015/02/nine-states-awareness.html)

The rewards of concentrative meditation are huge. But most of them requires intense effort eventually [3].

0: [http://omswami.com/2011/10/depression-definition-cause- and-c...](http://omswami.com/2011/10/depression-definition-cause-and- cure.html) 1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPL_eQKExN0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPL_eQKExN0) 2\. [https://www.amazon.com/Million-Thoughts-Meditation- Himalayan...](https://www.amazon.com/Million-Thoughts-Meditation-Himalayan- Mystic-ebook/dp/B01N8WB35O) 3: [http://omswami.com/2015/01/types-of- meditator.html](http://omswami.com/2015/01/types-of-meditator.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is something called "Mandukya Upanishads" which explain the four stages of AUM_, which some chant during meditation. I found the explanations of these concepts by a monk named "Sarvapriyananda" very useful. Search his name and the word "mandukya" on youtube for the explanation of what these four stages are.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also, an EEG device is very useful for quantifying actual brain activity/Alpha-Theta wave frequency/amplitude/ actual meditation performance/progress. See also neurofeedback, some proponents of which have been promising the effects of 40 years of zen meditation in a few tens of NFB sessions.

<comment><USER6> Do you recommend any particular devices? Muse, etc?

<comment><USER5> An OpenBCI / OpenEEG and devices from that class (I'm building one myself right now actually, but based on the AD7771 (similar to [https://github.com/neuroidss/FreeEEG32/](https://github.com/neuroidss/FreeEEG32/)) instead of the TI ADS1299 that OpenBCI uses).

<comment><USER6> Thank you. I don't have the know-how to build this device myself. Do you know any sites that sell openBCI/EEG devices?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something like this [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_enlightenment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_enlightenment)

You'll know you're 100% 'doing it right' when eventually weird sensations called piti show up. Could take some months of practice or could be a week. It gets progressively crazier from there, but you'll develop an intuition for what meditation is by then.

This is a 400 page book about sitting still and focusing on the breath that is known to work: [https://www.amazon.com.au/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation- Integr...](https://www.amazon.com.au/Mind-Illuminated-Meditation-Integrating- Mindfulness/dp/1781808201)

<comment><USER8> The book recommendation is solid. It describes the skill of meditation and process of improving it very well.

It helped greatly in my quest to understand and do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The biggest thing for me is experiencing my own emotions almost like coming upon landmarks while driving. They stop being "you" and start to be just part of the scenery as you drive along through your life.

</comment><comment><USER10> Getting better at Meditation makes you stop looking for buzzwords like 'Mastery' and enjoying more and more your own personal experience.

The more you get 'out' of your mind, the better you'd feel.

</comment><comment><USER11> Several comments are about emotions and becoming non-subject to them. Any anecdotes from non-emotional people on how meditation affected them?

<comment><USER12> I've always had a good handle on my emotions; ftmp from sports psychology training in my college golf days. Meditation reinforces that kind of mindfulness, but to me provides other value... Introspection is very important and useful to me. Meditation provides a new perspective/dimension from which to observe my mental processes. Not to mention several "ego-dissolution" [1] experiences on retreat have been quite powerful.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I observed three stages in my personal experience:

Stage 1: Being the river of emotions

In the beginning when emotions arose in my head, I was strongly attached to them. I identified myself with emotions I felt. My internal happiness and inner piece were strongly dependent on emotions I was experiencing. As a consequence, my internal happiness was volatile.

Stage 2: Observing the river of emotions

Through meditation I was able to become an observer of my emotions. Emotions are still present, but I don't identify myself with them that much. Like an observer watching a river of emotions. I still feel joy, I still get aggravated, but the relationship towards emotions has changed. What's present is curiosity towards my feelings coupled with a peculiar sense of detachment. It's a great feature of consciousness to have, IMHO.

I feel more alive, I recognize my emotions more accurately and I think I have become more emphatic. I find myself feeling the present moment in every day common situations (e.g., commute). I can concentrate more on tasks at hand, I'm naturally in the flow. On top of this, my internal happiness has become deeper and constant, as the attachment to my emotions has weakened.

It took me 2-3 years. I experimented with various kinds of meditation (static, dynamic, breathing, etc.) and picked those that I found effective. I started with Headspace, for about a year. Then dynamic osho meditation + qi-gong standing meditations worked great. Also, targeting my attention to how I felt during everyday common activities helped tremendously (what I feel when having an argument, what I feel before a presentation, etc).

Stage 3: Who's the observer?

Currently, I'm becoming more and more curious about the nature of the observer. Who's the observer? Who's feeling a feeling I'm feeling? If Stage 2 is a meta-level of thinking, stage 3 seems like a meta-meta level. I'm curious how that feels like. My hunch is that the internal happiness and calm becomes even more deeper. The question that is burning my consciousness currently is who will be feeling that calm then? :)

It seems to me we live in a world of abundant information and opportunities on cultivating one's consciousness. I think that advanced levels of consciousness can be reached quickly and effectively, compared to people who lived hundreds of years ago.

Also, it's a long-term game. I'm currently learning a 60-second free-standing handstand, starting from zero, and I know it's a project for at least a year. I'm 6 months in. The progress is really really slow and highly non-linear. Sometimes the non-linearity is very discouraging, sometimes very encouraging. Nevertheless, I show up 3 times a week and do my one hour routine. Despite the slowness, I cannot believe my current skills compared to January this year.

If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to hear more about how you apply your meditation practice to learning a skill.

I'm currently learning how to draw, and it's quite different from handstands in that I can't see the progress until after I look back every couple of months, whereas with a handstand I assume you can sort of "feel" the improvement by how balanced you are.

<comment><USER13> When learning a skill (for me it's Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Ido Portal movement) I can get into the flow very quickly and stay deeply concentrated for at least two hours. This concentration speeds up learning, in my experience.

I notice I don't get distracted easily. For example, when a teacher stands next to me while I'm doing an exercise. I notice him, a thought arises in my head that he is looking at me. However, I'm not attached to that thought and can continue focusing on the drill at hand. I like this feature.

The non-linear nature of learning a skill has become less distracting. When learning isn't progressing, I notice the thought. Since my internal state is less dependent on emotions, plateaus are less discouraging. It is still discouraging, but much less for me that it used to be.

Also, I think my learning itself goes quicker. My hypothesis is that my mind is getting used to non-standard states of consciousness (through meditation), which increases its "flexibility" and adaptability. Learning a new skills, in a sense of directing the mind into new territory (of yet to be learnt material), seems to go quicker.

The downside is that I cannot do tasks with 50% focus. I'm either in the flow or I'm not doing anything. This starts to apply to almost any daily activity. I'm slowly getting used to it.

Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your explanations remind me a lot of Josh Waitzkin, check out his book The Art of Learning or any one of his interviews. I think you will agree with a lot of what he has to say on learning as he approaches it very similarly.

<comment><USER13> Indeed, that book influenced me deeply. It helped me to further blend together the meditation practice with the physical/bjj practice. It's among my top three books. I'm happy to see the reference to it here on HN :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Of course you can have different kinds of experiences when you're meditating with discipline. Like deep sensations, seeing flashes of bright light in inner eye ETC. such experiences can indicate that you're doing it correctly but these are epiphenomena. This is not the real product.

I'm quoting a few extracts from an excellent book on meditation by a currently living enlightened monk: [https://www.amazon.com/Million-Thoughts-Meditation- Himalayan...](https://www.amazon.com/Million-Thoughts-Meditation-Himalayan- Mystic-ebook/dp/B01N8WB35O)

>>> Four Stages of Mental Stillness

The truth is that the mind is always talking. It is never silent. On the path of meditation the transformation of mind from a restless monkey to a docile cow happens in four stages. Experience of sustained and deep silence is not simply about feeling the bliss of quietude. It's much more than that.

One of the most amazing things you discover is a radical change in how you see the world around you – nothing provokes you any longer. This is one of the greatest rewards of right meditation – a state of no provocation. People, their statements, their responses, your own thoughts, reactions, emotions and desires – none of it will be able to provoke you.

Imagine you live in a metropolitan city and you have taken a sabbatical to spend some time in peace in a far off location – in a small, quiet, countryside town close to a seashore. Your journey involves a long drive and your goal is to get away from the hustle-bustle of the city life to the peaceful seaside. That calm seaside is the ultimate stage of meditation – infinite, expansive, oceanic. However, before you settle in such state and beyond, you will invariably go through the following four stages:

1\. Constant Activity – The Motorway

This is the first stage. Mind is always talking and most people remain unaware. When they want the mind to be quiet, like before sleeping or when they are depressed, and it does not shut up, that is when they realize how talkative mind is. There is constant activity going on in the mind. During this stage, when a meditator sits down to meditate, his mind does not quieten beyond sporadic short periods lasting no more than a few seconds. All that the meditator hears is chatter. The more he tries to quiet the mind, the louder it becomes. Thoughts from everywhere continue their onslaught, discouraging the practitioner. At the end of their 30-minute long session, they get up more drained and tired. Some mistake it for relaxation but in reality it is no more than a short nap.

...

The first stage of mental stillness is like the traffic on a major highway. Traffic is always flowing in both directions. The meditator is on the highway of thoughts. When you are on a highway, you have no control over the traffic around you. There are multiple lanes, there will be cars in front, in the left lane, in the right lane, behind you. Some are going slower than you, many are going faster than you, others are at the same pace as you. There is traffic flowing in your direction and in the opposite direction. People are not honking so nothing abruptly disrupts your cruise mode or distracts you, but you are aware of the traffic around you and you know this is normal on the freeway. You have to drive carefully, you cannot afford any mistakes while changing lanes. A meditator in the first stage has no control on the flow of thoughts. They are on a motorway and it is the peak hour. The only thing you can do is drive with utmost caution and eventually you will get off the freeway.

2\. Frequent Activity – Suburban Road

In this stage, the flow of thoughts is frequent but not constant. A meditator experiences easiness and many quiet stints lasting several moments where they get a glimpse of a mind free from thoughts – a no-mind state, a heightened state of consciousness. Your ability to meditate for longer period increases by a few minutes. If in stage one, you could meditate for 30 minutes, now you can meditate for 45 minutes. Most people are unable to maintain their concentration beyond a few seconds.

...

Think of this stage as driving on a suburban road. The thoughts in your mind are no longer traveling in 16 lanes in both the directions. The speed has come down by half. There is still a degree of constancy to them, they haven't come to a halt yet nor have they disappeared. Your thoughts are travelling at a slower speed now. The traffic is more manageable. Your attentiveness increases noticeably as you get to this stage.

...

3\. Occasional Activity – The Countryside Road

...

The third stage is the countryside road. You can drive for several miles before you come across any other vehicle. Green fields, meadows, pastures, pristine air, blue sky, expansive views, beautiful landscapes, quiet surroundings, no rush – ah, the pleasure of countryside driving! You can go slower or a bit faster, you choose your own pace. The conditions permit you to do that. A meditator who has reached stage three learns to harness and channelize his thoughts. Most of their sessions comprise spans of quiescence and bliss with occasional thoughts emerging here and there, on and off. They don't get up all relaxed from their meditation, for relaxed they already are, otherwise it would not have been possible to get to this stage. Instead, they get up feeling supercharged, refreshed and alert. A great meditator is always alert. Alertness is not only the reward but an essential ingredient for good meditation. A stage three meditator can easily sit unmoving for three hours.

4\. No Activity – No Thorough Fare

Even though I have called it a stage, there is really no going beyond this stage. Intellectually, we may define an infinite number of stages. In all practicality though, stage four is the outcome of crossing the three stages successfully. It comes with great, persistent, prolonged, intelligent, alert, intense and correct practice. Please carefully note all the seven adjectives in the previous sentence. You miss on any of these and there is no hope. A stage four meditator can sit unmoving, like a rock, for as long as he wants.

At this stage you experience extraordinary absorption and understand the reality of things unknown and inconceivable by the ordinary mind. Buddha said, "The one who knows the reality of one thing knows the reality of everything."

The fourth stage is enlightenment.

On your long drive to selfrealization, think of this stage as a private property, a large villa, an exclusive chateau. It has a path, a road but it is no thoroughfare – a large gate and a high fence block noise, traffic, people and any unwanted visitors. You have your own garden, comfort and peace. Any visitor will either have taken prior appointment which means you are aware of their arrival beforehand or you will have the choice to let them in or not. A stage four meditator is an adept, a siddha. He can stay on a thought for as long as he so chooses. The awareness is so crystallized that he can decide which thought he wants to entertain and which one he wishes to let go. There are no surprises.</comment>


Google May Stop Using Cookies to Track Web Users - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-may-stop-using-cookies-002000353.html

<comment><USER2> Anybody have references to the technical details behind this change?

One way I can think of would be to use ETag headers, which are intended to be used for caching but can be abused for tracking purposes[1] since by definition the browser is required to send back the server-provided ETag value.

Alternatively (or additionally), browser fingerprinting[2] seems like the perfect candidate technology to replace cookies for tracking purposes, since it can't easily be "cleared".

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag#Tracking_using_ETags](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_ETag#Tracking_using_ETags) [2] [https://panopticlick.eff.org](https://panopticlick.eff.org)

<comment><USER3> I would think you use a combination of IP address, browser fingerprint, and machine fingerprint.

Much better than cookies, because the user can't delete anything. Plus the fingerprints would still work across browsers (I think).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Google has resisted efforts to block cookies on its Chrome browser.

This doesn't seem quite right to me. I've been using Chrome's built-in third party cookie blocking for at least a couple years now. Coming from Firefox, that was one of the biggest things I missed at first in Chrome, so it remember being relieved when it was added relatively quickly.</comment>


Weather.com Has Become the Pawn of a Data Theft Scheme - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/weathercom-has-become-the-pawn-of-a-huge-data-theft-scheme-oy5p36b9 <comment><USER2> The article has no citations to back it the claims. It states "researchers also believe that this malware is being used by an organized crime ring either to prepare for an enormous future attack on targeted users, or to sell collected information on the dark web" with no attribution. Nor is it obvious how battery condition or orientation would be any use to attackers or purchasers.

<comment><USER3> Seems like it could be reproduced easily by a typical HN reader. "Fetch a site a thousand times and check the served JavaScript for weirdness" isn't exactly a high bar. Defining weirdness is the secret sauce for sure, though!

Battery condition and orientation are useful for fingerprinting devices, alongside the more commonly-known canvas attacks.

 _Your battery status may be used to track you online_ , 98 comments (2016) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12208880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12208880)

<comment><USER4> Your battery status and orientation aren't going to be useful for tracking you in a "future attack on targeted users", since by then both would have completely changed.

<comment><USER3> If the purpose is to identify you as a visitor to the site, then once they have identified you, that goal has been met.

You're assuming that they must, in the future, _again_ identify you: that is not at all necessary for e.g. spear phishing, blackmail, or other attacks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's the actual NOAA page for your area which is lightweight and _increadibly_ information dense, IMO it's what other weather websites can measure themselves against it's pretty awesome!

Also: curl wttr.in (I guess hackernews night nock that over heh, it seems like it's been struggling lately.)

<comment><USER6> Wunderground (weather underground) used to be an amazing resource before the "Web 2.0" redesign. You could still access it as "classic.wunderground.com" for many years right up until IBM bought them and they finally turned it off in ~2016. There are still screenshots of it floating around. It looks like crap, very 1999 web design but it was organically built and curated for ~15 years and quite functional compared to what they have now. Also significantly faster IIRC.

Commercial online weather sites have really gone downhill since wunderground classic. I have yet to see a comparable info-dense site since.

<comment><USER7> Spaghettimodels is my goto. [https://www.spaghettimodels.com/](https://www.spaghettimodels.com/)

Or at least the page for my market is. [https://www.spaghettimodels.com/cities/orlando.htm](https://www.spaghettimodels.com/cities/orlando.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Summary:

weather.com uses an ad provider who gives them a malicious ad .1% of the time.

<comment><USER9> When you customer base is 100m+, that's potentially affecting a lot of people. It's very likely most of their users are not very technically literate, so these kinds of attacks are very performant.

"Only 0.1% of our profit comes from pureeing children into profit!" isn't a defense.

<comment><USER10> Certainly, but that comment basically contains all the information I needed to move on to the next article in the HN firehose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A meteorologist colleague informed me of [https://www.yr.no/](https://www.yr.no/) and it has a version in English. It is what I usually use along with weather.gov. Their short and long-term World- Wide ECMWF forecasts are really nice as are the meteorograms. Yeah dump weather.com.

Edit: Ohh and one more: Jeff Masters and his crew at Weather Underground (wunderground.com). For example another nice meteorogram: [https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/co/boulder/KCOBOULD...](https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/co/boulder/KCOBOULD425)

<comment><USER4> Jeff Masters left wunderground last year. [https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Jeff-Masters-Leaving- Weath...](https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Jeff-Masters-Leaving-Weather- Underground-November)

<comment><USER11> I did not know that about Jeff. I don't have the reference on my fingertips, but it is an interesting read about how Jeff and co-founders started wunderground.com. These guys were early internet pioneers and played a role in the web as we know it today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This page quotes this from "Binary Defense":

 _" if a user stumbles upon a webpage that has a compromised third-party library, the malware runs checks. These checks consist of who the user agent is, the type of device they are operating on, the level of battery it has, and the device's motion and orientation. After these checks are verified, the malware will connect the infected device to a remoter peer prior to transferring the device's IP address"_

This statement is written to make it seem like like something bad is happening. But read the statement -- it's total BS.

<comment><USER12> yeah reading that felt weird. Honestly, I'm surprised this got so much attention on here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > scanning the session for malware using Wireshark's advanced malware analysis

Is this some feature of Wireshark I've never come across, or does the author not know what they're talking about?

<comment><USER14> I wondered the same, I made a mental note to check out this supposed feature. But now that you've asked this question and since the author was just peddling unsubstantiated hyperbolic horseshit in the 2nd half of the article, I'm guessing there's no such Wireshark feature.

<comment><USER13> I can save you the trouble. There is no such feature. Using Wireshark FOR advanced malware analysis is a thing, but it has no special feature built in with that name.

It's almost like the author was given some short hand notes and wrote them up wrong.

We use Wireshark day in, day out at my work place and many of us picked up on that statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 3 out of 3267 isn't really a big enough sample to determine the rate of occurrence.

Also, practical advice: use an ad/content blocker.

</comment><comment><USER16> AFAIK most sites and news agencies in the U.S. get their data from weather.gov [1] I have never seen any shenanigans on that site.

[1] - [https://www.weather.gov/](https://www.weather.gov/)

</comment><comment><USER17> weather.gov - use it.

<comment><USER18> I am still amazed weather.com exist. Go to weather.gov and get everything you need without all the ads, tracking and bs of that other site.

<comment><USER19> The folks behind weather.com are actively trying to kill weather.gov through lobbying and other campaigns. Folks need to be made aware that their tax dollars are already being spent on top-notch science tools by folks with a vested interested in their safety.

<comment><USER20> They almost got their dream leader of NOAA when Trump appointed the head of AccuWeather, Barry Meyers, to lead NOAA. He withdrew his nomination for health reasons, but believes the government shouldn't provide any type of direct forecasts to the public. Michael Lewis has a good write up of this in his book The Fifth Risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nothing in this article explained how this advertising could actually be dangerous. It "collects the IP address and user agent string." Is there something serious or not?

<comment><USER22> It seems the author is assuming we normally trust legitimate ad networks with this data, but in this case a scary third party is getting the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> weather.com was already collecting and marketing an obscene amount of user data as anyway. That's what drove me to stop using it a while back. Wunderground is in the same group.

This is US-specific, but what I use now is the National Weather Service's website. It's actually really excellent. [https://www.weather.gov/](https://www.weather.gov/)

</comment><comment><USER24> > Last year, a single malvertising campaign reached 100 million users, and > there's no reason attackers would pay for all that exposure unless some fish > were biting.

But there is.

For example, an entity could have sold the malware to a rube. They would do this by using the same "bullet proof" logic: why would they be selling a tool that can hit 100 million users unless some fish will bite?

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't understand, thats just a notice dialog box, right? Presumably clicking Ok just dismisses it, right?

<comment><USER26> From what I understood from the reading, this could be an example of XSS (cross-site scripting): we "trust" a site, but there are other connections towards other ones, potentially malicious. So, weather(dot)com could have been compromised and should need to run some checks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> shout out to TropicalTidbits

<comment><USER11> Great site, but more for severe storm and weather enthusiasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Weather.com steals forecasting data from NOAA

<comment><USER29> It's public domain information, there's no theft.

<comment><USER30> Thankfully Accuweather's plans failed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I trust darkweb organized crime more with my IP address, user agent, and battery info that I do Facebook or Google.

<comment><USER32> yes, but what about phone orientation!

<comment><USER32> ok, actually that info is also damaging in the wrong (i.e. Google/Facebooks) hands. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been boycotting The Weather Channel since they started naming storms.</comment>


Microsoft to store Superman on new glass storage - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/4/20942040/microsoft-project-silica-glass-storage-warner-bros-features-details <comment><USER2> Original story: [https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/ignite- project...](https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/ignite-project- silica-superman/)</comment>


Zoho: Thriving Amid the Giants - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/zoho-thriving-amid-the-giants/ <comment><USER4> It is worth elaborating on bootstrapping. When we started, the hottest tech company in the world was Netscape, and Yahoo was still an infant. So you can see how long it has taken us - nothing much happens to you in 1 year, 2 years and so on. The only thing we had going was patience. It helped that I was educating myself about Japan.

We didn't set out with the mission of bootstrapping. It was sheer necessity: we had no big ideas (only some little ideas), and had no way of impressing anyone to put money on us. Our very first product was this: <http://www.webnms.com/snmp/> \- the amazing part is we still make money on it! But sexy it isn't - a VC who stumbled on us told us "Why are you focused on such a tiny market?"

By the time money was offered to us, we didn't need it, and we were having too much fun building stuff to even bother pitching to VCs. We came close to a VC round once in 2000: a term sheet was offered. There were things there I didn't like and I was too lazy to negotiate with them, so I simply let it die.

<comment><USER5> "It helped that I was educating myself about Japan."

What was the motivation and can you elaborate and share with us on how you did this?

<comment><USER4> I was always fascinated by Japan, particularly in the context of India . After we started, I started looking closely at Japanese companies as role models. They had figured out stuff over the years that is unbelievable. Even today, there exist some technologies that pretty much only the Japanese do well (and not only in well known industries). Take a look at this company for example: <http://www.uniontool.co.jp/english/product_index.html>

They make drill bits for printed circuit boards, drill bits finer than human hair, drill bits you cannot even see with the naked eye.

The magic is years and years of patient, painstaking work, with occasional inspired leaps. That was good to know, particularly when we tended to get bored or tired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _But Zoho, a company based in Pleasanton, Calif., that offers similar services, is solidly profitable, with revenue of more than $50 million a year. And it has never taken a cent in venture capital or bank loans._

I would love to hear from someone more in the know on how Zoho was able to pull this off. Conventional wisdom seems to be that bootstrapping a product company to tens of millions is near-impossible. Is Zoho just a random aberration or do they offer lessons to others trying to do the same?

<comment><USER7> One thing Zoho does very differently is "outsourcing." I put that word in quotes because Zoho is partly based in Chennai, India, where I believe the CEO Sridhar is from. In fact the majority of the employees are based there, which keeps cost way down.

Now, they don't treat their Chennai office as a second-rate sweatshop to whom you parcel off grunt work and forget about it. That is a recipe for disaster. At the same time, they are very open about the fact that CS education/programming skills in India aren't nearly as good as in the U.S. So what do they do? They train their Indian programmers in house for 9 months. You can definitely take smart people without a great educational background and bring them up to speed if you're prepared to do that.

Sridhar is <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sridharvembu>, hopefully he can give us more details and correct me if I've gotten anything wrong.

<comment><USER8> A better term for what Zoho does is "offshoring". Outsourcing and offshoring are orthogonal. It's only when the two go together that you get sweatshops.

<comment><USER4> An even better term for us is "and Indian company with an American HQ" - <USER2> early days due to foreign exchange restrictions in India, it was painful to have the HQ in India. Increasingly that has faded as India has liberalized. We just imported a ton of Macs for our development team in Chennai; 10 years ago that would have sucked, now it is easy.

<comment><USER9> So with enough liberalizing (and perhaps more Indian customers) the American HQ might move to India?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am in India now, so was sleeping as this thread happened :-)

I hang out at Hacker News a lot, in fact, almost everyday I send an article to someone or other in the company. I strongly recommend it internally - I love HN (thanks, pg!).

To answer some of the questions: Zoho Corp used to be known as AdventNet. It was bootstrapped from the beginning (1996). Zoho is the latest and the fastest growing division; while we do not reveal our revenues, all I can say is that we are very happy where the Zoho division, as well as the whole company, has gotten. We have solid profits, which we invest in doing interesting new things.

Bootstrapping works, but you have to be very patient. It has taken us 13 years to get here. The fun part is that we now have the human capital as well as the financial capital (the first part is more important) to do a lot of interesting things, and we don't have to worry about VCs or Wall-Street (not that there is anything wrong with them ;-))

On the product side, Zoho has been evolving rapidly, reaching that polish and maturity in stages. If you had tried us 2 years ago, I wouldn't blame you for giving up on us. We are far, far better today - one proof point is that our company, of about 1000 people, has moved to Zoho almost entirely. There are some small bits and pieces that are not on Zoho, but by end of 2009 everything should move. The tools we use extensively within include Mail, Office suite, CRM, Project Management, Meetings, Creator ... just to give an example, we run well over 100 web meetings a day on Zoho Meeting ourselves. We used to pay WebEx about $25-30K per month, and our usage on Zoho Meeting would cost us about $3-4K if we were to charge ourselves. I say that to explain why we have paying customers.

Why the diversified suite? It is not only diversification, it is also a source of differentiation. We believe we can create very compelling integration scenarios that bring substantial productivity increases. One recent example is our Zoho CRM + Mail integration, which has sold over 1000 customers in the 8 weeks or so it has been released. You will see many more such things rolled out, partly addressing the criticism that it has been a fragmented suite.

So how do we do it? Silicon valley style flexible culture mated with Japanese style patient engineering. There are huge lessons to learn from Japan's post- War leap. As one example, Japanese companies (the giants of today) always had a train-your-own-talent policy. Their colleges most certainly didn't do it - for the most part, college in Japan is considered relaxation time before the real work begins. We dispense with what I believe to be non-essential parts of Japanese experience, like the rigid discipline, substitute it with silicon valley style flexibility.

The one achievement I am proud of is not a product or technology: it is our "University" (as we call it) where we recruit and train 17 year olds - <USER3> typical school leaving age in much of India. About 100 of our 1000 employees have come from that program now, and it is growing fast. Longer term, we should get 30-50% of our talent pool directly out of high school.

I have written extensively about it. Let me summarize: I do not believe in college. I believe most real education happens in the work-place, an observation Peter Drucker made originally. I regret going to college myself - we would have been 10x bigger if I hadn't gone to college, so that is my opportunity cost. I probably wouldn't have if I had grown up in America.

Sorry for the long comment. I wanted to answer all the posted questions in one shot.

<comment><USER6> Thanks so much for posting all this awesome info...very inspiring.

 _we would have been 10x bigger if I hadn't gone to college, so that is my opportunity cost._

Can you elaborate on this a bit? Are you saying that your growth curve was shifted back by n years (and you'll be 10x in n years), or that it was fundamentally changed as a result of going to college?

<comment><USER4> Mix of both. Growth curve shifted back n years (in my case 8 years - I did a PhD too, whose main utility was in coming to the US and then realize that PhD was a waste of time - all I can say is that I am a bit slow!). And those were some of the best years, so there is a fundamental change in the growth curve also.

The thing I most admire about America is the can-do spirit. I am sad that the education system in America is "Asianizing" rapidly, in the spirit of "We have to compete with the Chinese/Koreans/Indians ..." That's not what got America to where it got - it was the can-do "hacker" ethic, and the climate of freedom where that ethic flourished.

<comment><USER10> "Asianizing?" I go to UCI (second year is coming up) and I'm not familiar by what you mean by that. Sure we have a sizable Asian population here, but the UCI system does have a climate of freedom though not as much as UC Berkeley, maybe that's a good thing.

<comment><USER4> I meant mostly at the high school level. Particularly in the "high end" school districts. Loads of home work, drills, competitive test taking ... because, you know, the Chinese/Koreans are all "way ahead" and score so well in international competitive examinations. I would ignore those examinations (frankly I would ignore the spelling bee too!) but newspapers love such stuff, and scare the middle-class with "we are falling behind the Asians".

College hasn't gone Asian-style yet in the US.

The reason I bring that up is that due to the way the Indian IT sector works, we don't get the best test takers (they are grabbed by the big brand name service companies). So we get people who generally did't do well in various kinds of tests. I count that as a blessing :-)

<comment><USER11> Agreed.

As an aside, I am impressed that someone who went to an IIT (and so had to do well in the most competitive exam in the world) sees the dark side of these tests.

Interestingly, India just scrapped competitive exams for 10th grade (CBSE) which is a great first step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think its great that these guys appear to be genuinely interested in building a company rather than building it quickly to sell it. I haven't used any of their products, but this article has prompted me to give them a go

<comment><USER13> Over the last few years I've tried their products out now and then. I'm always disappointed with how little unification there is when moving from one app to another. The design (both UI and UX) always feels a sub-par to me as well. I've never been able to stick with any of their products for longer than a month or two without giving up in frustration.

Apparently a lot of people feel differently though.

<comment><USER4> We plead guilty to having a fragmented suite - that was the price of rapid evolution. But they are coming together nicely now. Check in on us every few months (seriously!). We hope to surprise you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very 'on message' piece: it's clear to HN crowd that most of Zoho's monkeymakers are non-web2 tools yet it is also clear Zoho wants more focused media for their web2 stuff and they are getting it.

</comment><comment><USER15> _Part of the opportunity for Zoho lies in differentiation. It has 19 online productivity and collaboration applications, including customer relationship management, project management and invoicing. So it only competes head-to-head against Google with five offerings._

So what exactly differentiates Zoho? The breadth of its product line? That doesn't sound like much of a differentiator.

Or is there more that this article doesn't mention? Any special processes, APIs, or features? It's relationship with VARs?

It _must_ have a great differentiator to have $50MM in revenue without funding. It's just unclear from this article exactly what that differentiator is.

<comment><USER16> We use Zoho and while I can't speak to the author's intended meaning I can tell you the two factors that keep us with them.

1\. Zoho's APIs are more mature. Especially the Remote API which allows you to use the Zoho tools but keep the data on your own servers. That's something Google has no competitor for (last I checked).

2\. The customer focus. The company has always been responsive to our requests and there have been occasions where they actually added a feature pretty soon after we asked for it (in fairness others might have asked for it earlier, I don't know)

It boils down to Zoho being focused on creating a great product for their customers while Google seems more interested in proving a point about online software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am not sure if dissing (college) education all together makes sense. I am sure you can claim to have learnt a lot of allied "subjects" during your education including teamwork, competing, leadership, analytical thinking, synthesis of data, risk taking (maybe) etc. But I do agree that education (whether American or Asian) should give students room to develop the above while learning core subjects for it to be holistic. It should not purely rely on it being rote based.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here is another interview of vembu (from India perspective) [http://www.pluggd.in/indian-startups/interview-with- sridhar-...](http://www.pluggd.in/indian-startups/interview-with-sridhar- vembu-founder-of-zoho-indian-startups-590/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sridhar, What does Zoho mean ? Folks here in Thiruvanmiyur don't seem to know.:-)

<comment><USER4> We were hunting for a domain in 2003 for our new initiative. We tried variations of SOHO (small office home office). Zoho happened to be up for sale. I was reluctant to shell out the $5K (I am cheap), but Raju Vegesna, persuaded me we should buy it. He was right.</comment></comment>


Nook, Barnes & Noble eBook Reader Announced - <AUTHOR> http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/ <comment><USER2> The real killer feature is this: "Share favorite eBooks with your friends, family, or book club. Most eBooks can be lent for up to 14 days at a time. Just choose the book you want to share, then send it to your friend's reader, cell phone, or computer."

<comment><USER3> Apparently you can only do this ONCE per book. Once a book has been shared, you cannot share it again.

<comment><USER4> Oof. I haven't seen any definitive confirmation on one-lend-ever-per-title (they seem cagey about it), but looking at this purely economically:

This is by some measure a winning strategy, since if I only have one "lend", I will very likely want to share it to the person most likely to buy it and create an additional "lend" to propagate the book.

It does seem like they are missing out on the power of inter-consumer advocacy, i.e. "Everybody read this now!" They should at least re-credit you (if not several times over) if you share with someone who later buys the book.

<comment><USER5> It may give the illusion of a good strategy, but limitless invites will spread the book faster leading to more buys overall (in my opinion). Since many people like to own books they've enjoyed and the freedom this model gives also pleases consumers I'd prefer it.

<comment><USER4> Happily, this report appears unfounded. There are no per-title limits on Nook lending. Yay!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Free wireless from Barnes & Noble via AT&T, the nation's fastest 3G network."

I absolutely love this trend in eBook readers.

<comment><USER7> I absolutely hate that I have to pay $60 a month to get 5 gigs of 3G on other devices.

<comment><USER8> I absolutely love my 10e a month uncapped ubiquitous 3G internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like they took the overview page down... you can still see features here:

<http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/features/techspecs/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Unless you can hide the full screen book cover display at the bottom I think that'll be very distracting.

<comment><USER11> I wonder how that screen works... surely it's off most of the time... otherwise you'd need a honking huge battery to keep it alive for 10 days.

<comment><USER12> eInk keeps state without power. The Kindle displays famous authors and book covers when it's off. The side-effect of this, you can measure battery life in mostly 'page-turns' as it uses power to update the display, but not while you're reading.

<comment><USER13> the bottom display is a color lcd touchscreen, it's not e-ink.

<comment><USER12> Ah, next time I'll make sure to read everything before chiming in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really can't wait to see what the new generation of large-screen eInk readers will look like. I bought the Kindle DX specifically to be able to read PDFs, books, and papers I already had. The smaller format readers (nook, kindle 2, etc) are fine for reading fiction and non-formatted documents, but a lot less useful to me personally.

I am fully convinced that eInk is a viable surface to read on and I can't wait to see what the displays will look like when they mature.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I'm still holding out for something that simulates 8.5x11 paper. The upcoming QUE from Plastic Logic looks promising... 8.5x11, wifi, pdf and annotation (capacitive touchscreen) support. Supposedly in January. Coincidentally, it will also use the B&N ebookstore.

How is reading say, a research paper, on your DX? I have been tempted by it, but the screen still seems too small.

<comment><USER12> To be honest, it is pretty small but it's very usable. In well-let areas that aren't moving, the scaled-down PDFs look readable and 'good enough'. If you want, you can send me a PDF and I'll take a picture of what it looks like on the DX.

I also thought about waiting for the Plastic Logic device, but decided on getting the DX for a few reasons. First, I had about $300 of Amazon gift cards from my credit card, and the Kindle became a great target to spend it on. Secondly, considering QUE's target market, I assumed it would be prohibitively expensive for a personal reading device. Also, the DX is available _now_ and has a cell connection, which is nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is nice. I wonder if it'll be available outside the US. It would be cool to have even without the 3G.

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me a lot of the video game console market, where newcomers compete with: the existing consoles with the established customer base, library of games and even second or third generation consoles that have the initial quirks ruled out.

B&N will have to compete with the Kindle and even Sony's readers to an extent. The biggest question is always what will B&N bring to the table that is different enough or better than its competitors to woo customers over? It seems a lot like just another iPod and iTunes clone.

<comment><USER2> I think one notable difference is the ability to go to a local store and see the device in person - this is a huge advantage and one that may help them cover a lot of ground quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The biggest dealbreaker for the Nook will be its eBook store. Will it be comparable to the Amazon eBook store? If not, I doubt the Nook will take off.

<comment><USER16> Looking at the comparison chart with the line "More than a million titles available" and thinking about the leverage they have with publishers, I think B&N has already passed Amazon.

<comment><USER17> Most of those titles are public domain books scanned as part of Google Books and complete with OCR typos. Right now, Amazon's selection is better.

<comment><USER16> Confusing chart then because they list the free books as a separate line item.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hmm, AT&T's 3G pales in comparison with Verizon Wireless, but it could possibly be better than Sprint.

</comment><comment><USER19> And Richard Dawkins is speaking at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble tomorrow night. Can't wait.</comment>


Algolia raises a $18.3M Series A - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/algolia-grabs-18-3-million-from-accel-for-its-search-api-on-steroids/

<comment><USER2> Congratulations team Algolia! We loved all the help Sylvain gave us with the cdnjs.com search. It just works, and faster than anything I've ever seen.</comment>


Introducing Our New Canadian Datacenter: TOR1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/introducing-our-new-canadian-datacenter-tor1/ <comment><USER2> I like the name. Does it suggest anything aside from where the city where it's located?

<comment><USER3> The name is to reflect Toronto. =]

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Question for anyone familiar with the privacy concerns of BC (specifically government): is this new DC enough to satisfy the requirements of BC?

</comment><comment><USER5> Ah, this explains why last month I suddenly had to start paying Canadian sales tax on my droplets.

</comment><comment><USER6> Is it possible to be billed in CAD?

<comment><USER3> At this time all billing is still done in USD.</comment></comment>


301 redirects: a dangerous one way street (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/301-redirects-a-dangerous-one-way-street <comment><AUTHOR> The problem with 301 without cache headers is that some browsers cache this forever due to some interpretation what 'permanent' means.

You often can't use 302 because all your external links no longer work SEO magic for you with a 302. Google only transfers link juice with 301 [1].

If you make a mistake and misconfigure your server, you're toast.

If a disgruntled employee 301 redirects your domain, you're toast.

If a service provider misconfigures your domain, you're toast.

If a hacker (from a competitor) 301 redirects your domain, you're toast.

If you buy a domain that had a 301 on it, it's worthless.

If you buy a domain that had 301s on it that point to phishing sites, you're in trouble.

I always add cache headers to 301 redirects I use to at least prevent me from shooting myself with an arrow in my knee.

UPDATE: [1] Google seems to have changed this recently. It also no longer considers http/https different pages as it did in the past with the same content [https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-confirms-no- loss-...](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-confirms-no-loss-in-link- authority-on-https-implementation/147933/)

<comment><USER2> I think that when you clear the cache on recent versions of Chrome it also removes 301 redirects. I'm not sure though.

<comment><USER3> That fixes the problem for you as a web client, but not you as a domain owner. Everyone who visited it during the 301 will continue to treat it as such until they clear their cache (or equivalent).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's what _permanent_ means. "Adjective permanent Without end, eternal. Lasting for an indefinitely long time. "

Also, "This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise," says RFC 2616.

Working as designed, IMNSHO. Perhaps not working as _intended_ , but alas, that's a case of ¬RTFM.

<comment><USER5> This seems yet another example of web professionals not understanding HTTP.

Much like webpages that say "404 not found" with a "200 OK" header.

<comment><USER6> Is the status line technically a header?

<comment><USER4> Request (section 5) and Response (section 6) messages use the generic message format of RFC 822 [9] for transferring entities (the payload of the message). Both types of message consist of a start-line, zero or more header fields (also known as "headers"), an empty line (i.e., a line with nothing preceding the CRLF) indicating the end of the header fields, and possibly a message- body.

/quote RFC2616 (So, the status line is an entity of its own, which is _followed_ by headers.)

<comment><USER6> That's what I thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 2012 - somebody should write 2012 into the title of this post (that by the way hasn't any concrete data)

I did some testing in 2009, think around 2012 and 2014. Additional to loffilegrepping after some big site URL rewrites.

It's a non issue. No caching headers, the redirect gets cached only for the current browser session. Close it, reopen it, gone, done.

Lets discuss this one based on data. (Which I cant provide right now as Im on a beach on Sri Lanka right now with a FirefoxOS device amd I dont know how to see Http requests on this one, but) Please prove me wrong! based on test, data, not blogposts.

<comment><USER8> It still seems to be a problem.

I just tested it in Firefox on a Mac. I restarted Firefox. I even rebooted. Developer Tools > Network tab says "cached". I can't confirm that it is cached forever, but it is not only "for the current browser session".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "There are only two hard things in Computer Science..."

I guess some people think the purpose of 301 is more like that of 410: update references so you don't try to go there again. The difference is that with 301 you additionally instruct the client to not even attempt to go there again in the future.

But the article does raise an interesting point: if I own somedomain.example and set it up with a 301 redirect to myotherdomain.example and enough people visit it that most people will have cached the redirect, doesn't that basically mean I now own it for perpetuity (or until enough people have cleared their cache) even if I don't renew the domain and new requests to the domain are no longer served (by the same IP)?

Or do browsers have some kind of protections against this, at least based on DNS? It's a bit too convoluted for a proper DOS attack (because you need to own the domain long enough and make it popular enough to poison everyone's caches) but a naive implementation seems like it would effectively render domains unusable if someone set up a 301 on them at some point in the past.

<comment><USER10> For an important busy web site, even serving up a redirect for a short amount of time could be enough to cause some serious problems. It's a way of turning "I hacked and defaced this website but they fixed it 24 hours later" into "I hacked and defaced this website and they fixed it 24 hours later, but loads of people still see the defaced version".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I took over a domain which had previously 301-redirected HTTP:// to HTTPS://. It caused us no end of trouble getting the alpha site online -- obviously we set up SSL but we didn't realise it was the _first thing we'd have to do_.

It also caused half a day of confusion to understand why some of our web browsers were still failing to connect and others could see the alpha site (because they'd never visited the previous 301 site at that address).

<comment><USER12> This isn't just a problem with things like HTTP. The industry as a whole lacks a standard uniform way of dealing with domain transfers or expiration. CAs for example will happily issue certificates that expire after your domain.

<comment><USER13> It's not the CA's job to make sure your domain isn't expiring. It's yours.

<comment><USER14> > It's not the CA's job to make sure your domain isn't expiring. It's yours.

Really? In the simplest case, their entire job is certifying that the holder of the private key is the holder of the domain name[1]. That begs the question, of course: how is it that we trust every single CA to certify every single domain? Why don't we trust the issuer of each domain hierarchy to certify only those domains it's permitted to issue?

The entire XPKI is broken, broken, _broken_.

[1] In the more complex case, of course, they certify that the keyholder is some external entity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was recently burned by this. The client had left his server misconfigured for a few hours, and a lot of his static content ended up in a redirect loop. I was called in to fix the mess.

Although modern browsers are clever enough to detect a redirect loop and throw an error, they're not clever enough to detect when the redirect loop is caused by a cached 301 response. So they cache the redirect loop as well. Throw in another layer of caching (CloudFlare), and now you've got a bunch of URLs that will be stuck in a redirect loop for a very long time.

The only solution was to append some garbage to every URL, like "?cache=no". Fortunately, the problem only occurred with static content, so nginx happily discarded the querystring and returned fresh content.

</comment><comment><USER16> > _You can improve a bit on this by sending along a bunch of cache control > headers to at least limit the damage._

It would have been useful to _include those headers_ in the blog post.

<comment><USER4> Something like this says "keep this cached for 100 days":

Last-Modified: Fri, 19 Feb 2016 12:54:49 +0100

Expires: Sun, 29 May 2016 12:54:49 +0200

Cache-Control: max-age=8640000, must-revalidate

See also: [https://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#CONTROL](https://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#CONTROL)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This can be fixed with a 302 from the destination back to to the start/source of the 301, assuming that the old domain isn't redirecting any more (which would cause a redirect loop)

</comment><comment><USER18> Uh, I just realized that there are a lot of bullets in my foot.

<comment><USER19> I'll take two of this on a t-shirt, please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a draft blogpost (somehow octopress did not respect my darft: true setting) that describes the same problem: [http://ragmaanir.mypresident.de/blog/2015/08/03/ruby-web- dev...](http://ragmaanir.mypresident.de/blog/2015/08/03/ruby-web-development- tips/)

Also, 301 might poison proxy-caches, so even if you clear the cache in your browser it might still not work.

</comment><comment><USER21> So if you were to momentarily hack a big site like twitter.com and serve out a 301 to, say, pornhub, you would permanently brick twitter?

<comment><USER22> Likely a site with the influence of twitter would be able to get this taken care of. (directions at another domain on how to clear your cache or even a direct update from browser vendors possibly)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a browser design issue not a protocol/server issue. At the time HTTP 1.1 was written browser caches would hold at most a few weeks of browsing history before things started falling out so 'permanent' functioned like our intuition

Whats more surprising is "13.2.2 Heuristic Expiration"[1]

If you specify (or your framework does) a Last-Modified time WITHOUT Cache- Control the browser is free to make up its OWN cache expiration rules (the item is implicitly cacheable)

[1] [https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html](https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html)

<comment><USER24> Heuristic Expiration is a case of documenting existing weirdness. Older browsers would have cache expiration policy be a setting the user could control, so you can't really leave off explicit headers with any expectation a default will be respected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's easy to live your life to keep Google happy. 301 redirects have been an important part of online website life.

But then I do accept this perspective (if it's within your call to take this risk). Just don't 301-redirect it. Let the search engines figure it out for themselves.

If a user has a bookmark to an old resource, then it's a liability for you to try to keep your web of 301s working.

KISS!

<comment><USER26> I would say links are a bigger problem than bookmarks. For instance stack overflow answer links to apple or msdn references, are really annoying if they die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> When working with non-trivial redirects, test them with something like "wget -S $url" instead of your browser. The redirect caching makes it very painful to to repeatedly test the same redirect.

Also, start with a 302, and only change the status to 301 once you're confident they are correct.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there any company that provides 301 or 302 as a service? -- something cheap. I know it's not hard to set-up a small box on AWS and install Node.js (or whatever). But I would pay few dollars a month for some service to run that for me.

<comment><USER29> Wouldn't a URL shortener service be good enough? (E.g. [https://goo.gl/](https://goo.gl/) )

<comment><USER29> Oh I re-read the article. You mean in the case of old domains.

<comment><USER28> Yes, in the case where you have a old domains and you want Google page rank juice (via 301).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If the owner of the domain had done it, would it still really be an "eternal issue" since:

a. most popular websites nowadays are so bloated that browser caches would throw out many things (including your tiny site that someone checks a few times a week or even longer) a lot sooner compared to how things were about 10 years ago (I presume the default disk cache sizes in browsers have not increased by multiples in this period).

b. more people are browsing through mobile devices that are dumped in a few years and replaced with a new one, new browser, empty cache, etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> HSTS is similarly one-way, but it's not indefinite, I think.

<comment><USER9> It's not indefinite because you need to specify a duration. However nothing stops you from setting an extremely long duration and in fact most tutorials seem to advise doing so for safety reasons.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, a short duration is practically useless. I've seen one site that sets the duration to a mere 24 hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What part of "permanent" did the author miss? Seriously, specs should be read literally, if interpretation is required then it's not a perfect spec.

</comment><comment><USER33> Now I don't feel so bad for being lazy and just using a 302 everywhere. I never even bothered to learn how to configure nginx to send a 301.

</comment><comment><USER34> I thought best practice these days, at least for REST, was a 308 ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7238](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7238)), since 301 has the bizarre behavior of being converted to a GET by some UAs (which conflate it with 303), enshrined for hysterical raisins. Is this not the case?

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there a matrix showing which browsers are aggressively caching the 301s?

It would be good to get an indication of the potential impact.

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I've read, looks like Firefox and Chrome cache forever, IE not. But I might be wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I hit this recently with my personal website and it sucks. Luckily no one visits my website.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why not just redirect back from the new to the old URL? A sane client should then check if the old 301 is still there (not sure if by the spec, but it is common sense). I believe I once tried this and it worked with Firefox. Not sure, though.

<comment><USER38> If you are lucky enough to have control over the new URL.

edit: > A sane client should then check if the old 301 is still there Check out kijin's comment about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I saw this article at approximately the same time as I saw this tweet: [https://twitter.com/P0TUSTrump/status/684891719985410048](https://twitter.com/P0TUSTrump/status/684891719985410048) .

\--- begin factually incorrect statement ---

      To save you a click: Jeb Bush forgot to renew his domain,
      and Trump bought it and redirected to
      www.donaldjtrump.com

      Thankfully, Trump is using a 302, not a 301.

\--- end factually incorrect statement ---

 __EDIT: ah I see -- jebbush.com has only ever had that redirect throughout its entire (short) existence. Leaving my comment up though, since it 's more about what one could do in that scenario than any particular current event. __

<comment><USER40> Jeb Bush or his organisation never owned it and did not forget to renew it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Eli5: what happens if your 301 redirect domains a to b and b to a?

</comment><comment><USER42> Should say (2012).

</comment><comment><USER43> Thanks!</comment>


Edward Tufte appointed by Obama to help track, and explain stimulus funds - <AUTHOR> http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003e0&topic_id=1# <comment><USER2> I sincerely hope Tufte can successfully counteract the Washington tradition of applying the methods from _How to Lie with Statistics_. A good visualization can just as well expose the fraud from a contrived one.

<comment><USER3> From what I've read of his work, Tufte has almost a compulsion to force data to tell the truth, and do so in an effective manner.

Which makes me fear that his career in Washington will be politically disastrous and end rather quickly...

I sincerely hope I'm wrong about that. We could use more people like him keeping the government honest from the inside.

<comment><USER4> Yes. What if the data plainly presented show that the stimulus plan was plainly a waste of money?

P.S. How many of you, when you hear announcements of how many jobs have been saved by the stimulus plan, immediately do the mental arithmetic to figure out how many dollars of taxpayer funds were spent to save each job? I think I could do better in my family in keeping us all actively employed in work helpful to society with the same number of dollars per employable person.

<comment><USER5> _How many of you, when you hear announcements of how many jobs have been saved by the stimulus plan, immediately do the mental arithmetic to figure out how many dollars of taxpayer funds were spent to save each job?_

I do not, because that is a fool's calculation.

The value created is not one year's salary, it's the difference in the present value of an individual without a job and the present value of an individual with a job, including all estimable secondary effects (both positive and negative.) If you simply divide it and compare it to a year's salary, you'll sit there and go 'HURRR THAT IS DUMB', but in reality, you're proving only that you don't really understand policy analysis.

\----

I'm reminded of a situation that occurred many years ago in my career, when I was still working in a corporate setting. My team hit a seemingly intractable combinatorial explosion problem while trying to create a tool for the sales force. It was incredibly difficult, and quickly blew through the allocated budget (which we'd told them right from the gate, was inadequate).

The management just assumed we were lying... that we weren't up to this task, or we were just lobbying for more money and man-power for our group (I was trying to make a very specific high-end hire to help, and I had already purchased some serious iron). In fact, they were so convinced that this couldn't be this difficult to accurately analyze that they started shopping consultancies, and most agreed with us, that this would be difficult and expensive... but one did not. One said "yes, we can build it, no problem."

A year later, the consultancy had burned through a pile of money, and had nothing to show for it.

Only then did management recognize that maybe this seemingly simple configuration problem was not, in fact, as simple as they imagined. And perhaps we weren't just lying or waving our hands when we said "this shit is not as simple as you think it is." (and even then, they didn't admit it outright. I had an all-day meeting which consisted solely of them asking me stupid question after stupid question, as to why various simple approaches wouldn't work... and me having to draw out specific examples on a whiteboard, indicating the business and technical problems with these simple approaches.)

It's sad, but common, for people to assume that other people's jobs are easier than they really are. Even very smart people fall into that trap... but generally speaking if intelligent, hard-working people are advocating something that seems stupid to you, it's probably because you don't understand the problem or the solution.

<comment><USER6> > The value created is not one year's salary, it's the difference in the > present value of an individual without a job and the present value of an > individual with a job, including all estimable secondary effects (both > positive and negative.) If you simply divide it and compare it to a year's > salary, you'll sit there and go 'HURRR THAT IS DUMB', but in reality, you're > proving only that you don't really understand policy analysis.

You're assuming that the job will last beyond the year and that we couldn't simply send that person $X dollars and produce most of the same benefits.

<comment><USER7> Your comment, particularly the part where you talk about "simply send that person $X and produce most of the same benefits" underscores your complete and utter lack of comprehension of his post.

Try reading it again.

<comment><USER8> It would be better if you explained in a neutral way what you thought was the source of the misunderstanding.

<comment><USER7> Ok, although IANASS (not a social scientist) (edited to add: and sorry anamax for the uncivil tone, long day):

Economic activity has benefits for society at large -- we get stuff out of it, and there's a feedback loop where more people with money in their pocket means more demand, which means more people employed, which means money in their pocket, etc.

Recessions are when the economy gets out of balance (historically inventory oversupply, more recently it tends to be financial meltdowns) and that feedback loop goes negative -- less money in pocket, so less spending, so less production.

Counter-cyclical spending is, according to economic theory, the one point in the cycle where the government should be encouraged to spend money like they're in vegas, up 50k and hanging at the strip club. Breaking this negative feedback loop is priority #1 -- debt can be paid back later, and if you've been breaking out your counter-cyclical toolkit, you've already lowered interest rates to near-zero so this is really cheap debt, 1% interest or lower -- if you produce any return at all, you've got a win in addition to the counter-cyclical effects.

Once you've decided to spend, you've got to decide how. Giving money to people in lump sums (which was in fact about 40% of the bill, the bill was 40% tax cuts) is fast and simple, so it certainly has a place, but keeping people in a job is far more effective because you create externalities. That job is producing something of value to the economy, that person is gaining skills/experience leading to future employability, and assuming that business is ok, their labor might lead to additional job openings at the same company later. These are all sustainable improvements that build on themselves and contribute back towards that positive feedback loop. Just spewing money out to people without any targeting whatsoever can only be a brake on recession -- it doesn't really help lay the foundations for the bounceback.

<comment><USER9> This model seems flawed:

1\. The government can increase spending, but they can't create money. Either they get it from taxes, or they get it from devaluing the currency (i.e. taxing holders of currency, or currency-denominated assets). How would it help to take $1 away from an employer building widgets, and use it to hire a Diversity Coordinator at the DMV?

2\. What's the long-term effect on business decisions if the only two modes the economy is in are a) growth, or b) near-zero interest rates? It looks like this would lead to lots of leverage.

3\. You're assuming that it's always better for someone to have a job than to lose it. So you'd end up subsidizing candlestick makers (probably by taxing light bulb factory owners).

At best, this philosophy merely gives everyone a reason to misbehave. At worst, it fines the productive, growing parts of the economy, in order to reward the unproductive, shrinking parts of the economy. America in the 1930's. Japan in the 1990's. How many lost decades will it take to discredit this stuff?

<comment><USER10> WRT to #1, before you get to the "or" items, government borrowing crowds out private, since a national government (or at least ours) is viewed as a much safer creditor in the earlier periods of economic trouble.

In the longer term, sovereign debt defaults, explicit or implicit (your "or" items, including the inflation tax), inevitably follow this type of counter- cyclical spending (statistically, since this tends to be a regional or world- wide thing).

<comment><USER7> Government debt is an entirely different product than private debt. Different interest rate and all of that.

Regarding the sovereign debt defaults, did we have one of those after the great depression? Sovereign debt defaults are associated with financial panics. Don't bind up intermediate (correct or incorrect) steps with the root cause.

<comment><USER10> It may be a different product but it's still in the same market for people who want to lend out their money. The different interest rates are because of different perceived levels of risk; normally a government can offer less because they're viewed as more likely to return the money.

If they aren't in the market or to the degree they are less so, investors have no choice but to put their money elsewhere.

As for your question, I don't think we can easily say. E.g. the BLS says the dollar lost 28% of its (CPI) value from 1940 to 1946 ... but I'm not willing to assign blame due to the discontinuity of WWII.

If Japan defaults in its 3rd Lost Decade, will that be the cause of the initial '80s panic or decades of the wrong medicine to deal with it?

<comment><USER7> IMO decades of the wrong medicine in Japan's case. In the case of an Argentina where a ton of crap hits the fan and they default a year later, it's a lot harder to blame the medicine.

(regarding Japan -- the consensus is that they didn't do enough stimulus, and that in addition to their high savings rate is why they fell into a deflationary spiral. the government printing money and handing it out with coupons for blow and hookers would have been a better strategy than what they did)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This should be an easy job. Just photoshop an image of a black hole with a giant pile of nearly a trillion dollars falling into it.

<comment><USER10> Very funny, but if Tufte wants to avoid destroying the brand he's built for the 78% of the American population who don't self-identify as liberals, he'll need to clearly present things like:

How much of the stimulus went to temporarily prop up state government budgets and how it permanently increased the budgets of the states that accepted it. Bonus points for explaining how Texas is so successful while refusing this temporary windfall.

ADDED: The above effect on future state budgets could be illustrated as being caused by synchrotron radiation coming from the dollar bills falling in at relativistic speeds.

How "the most shovel ready" project of weatherizing houses became the slowest because the Department of Labor has to make Davis-Bacon "prevailing wage" calculations for 30,000 localities (still not finished...).

Etc.

I fear he'll either show us that he's a fool or what his price is.

<comment><USER7> Answers:

How much went to temporarily prop up state govt budgets? Zero, even though preventing a teacher layoff would've been about the most efficient use of stimulus dollars possible. The twins from Maine held the bill hostage until no money was given to state government. (If you're wondering how much went to tax cuts, that figure is around 40%).

How was texas so successful while refusing this temporary windfall? I don't know, but they definitely didn't refuse anything. Rick Perry made a bunch of noise, got his headlines, convinced you that he's a true believer and then took the money.

The weatherization project you got about right, although those studies finished on schedule a month ago or so.. that was a stupid provision and they should have eliminated it, they probably didn't realize it would lead to a bureaucratic snafu.

Hopefully, what Mr. Tufte will show us, are some very compelling and illustrative graphs that do a good job of explaining where the money went. There seems to be some confusion abounding, especially on the tax cut part.

EDIT: A further hope I have is that people who normally respect things like statistics, figures and Mr Tufte don't immediately do a 180 and disown the guy if he doesn't produce a pie chart of the stimulus money that says "100% = SOCIALISM"

<comment><USER10> While the details of the $44.5 billion for local education aid were indeed changed by "the twins from Maine" (although I'm not sure to the degree you claim), you're not counting the $40 billion for unemployment benefits ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009#Aid_to_low_income_workers.2C_unemployed_and_retirees_.28including_job_training.29)) and the required changes in state law to get that money, or the $86.6 billion for Medicaid ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009#Healthcare), "More than 11% of the total bill is allocated to help states with Medicaid"; I can't remember if there were eligibility changes required there).

For you to be right about no state aid and there being no strings attached, you'd need to explain why there was all that furor about the governors of Texas and one of the Carolinas (I think) refusing the aid, and the provision in law to bypass a governor, and how the governor of Florida's figurative and literal embrace of Obama is helping to destroy his campaign for Senator.

WRT to tax cuts, putting the annual relief ($70 billion this year) for the not inflation indexed Alternative Minimum Tax into the stimulus was pure political theater.

And I just can't see how Perry "took" the Texas share of the remaining $167 billion in individual tax cuts (perhaps he should have instituted a state income tax to capture that "windfall" for the state???) or how he "took" the Texas share of $51 billion in business tax cuts, but I don't know anything about Texas business taxes.

Anyway, I don't need to see graphs to get a rough idea from the listed breakdowns at Wikipedia or any of the other zillions of sites.

<comment><USER7> Ok, you're right, there was a lump sum allocated to the Fed Dept of Ed which will eventually make it's way to the states through various reform-based programs -- programs, which, btw, are based on teacher accountability in a way that the teachers' unions are hugely opposed to.

I thought conservatives would eat that up? Between that and the tax cuts, I can see how the party-over-substance crowd would have a big problem with this guy actually documenting where the money went. It's a lot easier to just shout "socialism!" than to talk about the numbers.

Regarding aid "to states to shore up their budgets", there was precisely zero, funding unemployment benefits and medicaid is not grant money going to states, it passes straight through to the recipients. There was originally a big item that involved the federal government contributing to state budgets in order to forestall state layoffs for a year, which I thought would be a great example of counter-cyclical spending. Unfortunately, it also made great hay for those who wanted to attack the bill in general as "big spending", so it got jettisoned. That's what I was referring to, not pass-through expenditures like medicaid, unemployment, etc.

<comment><USER10> "I thought conservatives would eat that up"

Again, watch for the attached strings, which I've read include a Federal curriculum. And we've yet to see if these programs actually make it in the face of union opposition. Last time I checked 1/5 of the members of any given Democratic presidential nominating caucus are unionized teachers, and the shutdown of the D.C. voucher program, the one that provides among other things scholarships to the school Obama's children go to, does not inspire confidence.

Conservatives don't think much of temporary tax cuts, you only get changes in behavior with permanent changes in fiscal policy (and as for permanent 1-1.5 trillion dollar deficits...). People just pocket one time a few hundred dollar things like the Bush stimulus or this.

And we have a tendency to ask, "Is this worth the price?" You have to look at both sides of the ledger.

While unemployment and Medicaid _may_ be "pass-through" in terms of mechanism, the fact remains that the states are on the hook for most of that money anyway and would have had to pay it out if not for this temporary Federal windfall.

<comment><USER7> Well, hang on, you're saying that rather than a temporary tax cut, you'd have preferred the more substantive policy changes? Let's say Obama said "Hey, I thought about doing a temporary tax cut, but I'd rather concentrate on policy changes to help our bottom line" -- how do you think that would have gone over with the right side of the aisle?

PS Regarding policy changes to help the bottom line... you've seen those projected deficit numbers right? Two questions:

1) Do you think those projected deficits are the result of Obama administration policy (about 3 months old at the time I first saw the chart), or because of underlying fundamentals?

2) If you had to guess at the fastest rising cost in government spending, would you guess healthcare?

3) Ok fine, one more but I can't resist, if Obama said "I'm not pursuing a tax cut, I'm prioritizing healthcare reform because it will save the government a ton of money", how do you think the conservative reaction would go? :)

<comment><USER10> Yes, but not any substantive policy changes that Obama wants.

1\. Obama administration policy. There's no limit to how fast a politician can spend money ^_^. (Well, to authorize the spending of money; as we've seen with the stimulus bill there's no limit to the amount of red tape a bureaucrat can then use to tie up a process.)

2\. Yes.

3\. Unfavorable, since we don't believe that the ends justify the means and we don't believe him on costs. The CBO doesn't believe him, and that's not counting the "savings" achieved by gutting Medicare, which will of course be repealed in due course or "adjusted" every year as is already done for Medicare payments to doctors.

<comment><USER7> Well, sounds like the dude can't win with you -- I mean why waste the time with justifications and arguments if it's just a big fat "NO!", even when he's co-opting formerly republican ideas?

There's exactly one time when the government should make a point of counter- cyclical deficit spending -- when in a recession. This is in pretty much every economics textbook, including the one by Greg Mankiw (Bush's chief economics adviser) that I read in college.

What we saw however, was that according to Dick Cheney, "Deficits don't matter [as long as a republican is in office]", then as soon as a democrat is in office, deficit spending during the worst financial meltdown in recent history is against economic fundamentals all of a sudden.

On healthcare.. I don't even know where to start, whether it's with your total refusal to acknowledge that we should focus on dollar-driven solutions ("I don't believe the ends justify the means"), or your incoherent philosophy "I don't believe in government financed healthcare in general EXCEPT for medicare, in which case I'll accuse you of 'gutting' it."

At the end of the day, we have a huge budget hole as a result of skyrocketing medical costs. I spent 3 years in local government laying off teachers and feeling like shit about it because of those costs. Forgive me if I value those teachers' paychecks and the kids' education over abstract ideals about what is socialism, what isn't, and how something can only be a good idea if a republican proposes it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Obama scored some big points in my book for this one.

Edit:

When he did not follow up on his promise to have C-Span follow the health care debates, left a bad taste in my mouth.

I have attended a Tufte conference, and he spent a lot of time discussing the challenger disaster. While he was no where near the as good as Feynman (who is?), he graphically presented the government information very well.

If anything it will draw attention to the problem as he is a big name in this space.

</comment><comment><USER13> I never realized that Tufte was a political science professor. Anyway, I think Obama made a great choice here. (I was going to write a long discussion of why, but it will just lead to political debate, so I am censoring myself :))

</comment><comment><USER14> Not since Feynman on the Challenger Commission have I been so excited about a presidential appointment.

<comment><USER15> Seconded. After a rocky first year, this decision alone makes me feel vindicated for having voted Obama.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Visualization Czar", anyone?

</comment><comment><USER17> I am in Shock.. happy shock.. But, shock..

<comment><AUTHOR> What is so shocking, I think Obama has been finding the best-of-the-best and appointing them to the right places.

<comment><USER18> Can you give some examples of this?

He's appointed several RIAA laywers to positions at the Department of Justice.

He picked Janet Napolitano to run Homeland Security. (I'm a 'Zonie of 10 years.)

While he may also be picking some good people, I'm not seeing "best of the best" as any sort of theme.

<comment><USER19> Steven Chu as the secretary of energy — absolutely fantastic choice.

<comment><USER20> Regardless of where you stand on the global warming debate...

"California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday."

<http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/04/local/me-warming4>

So were to believe within 90 years all the farms and vineyards will vanish from California if we do nothing?

That's just headlining grabbing bunk, hardly befitting a "scientist".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I predict less use of PowerPoint.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully, less slides, because slides aren't inherently bad

<comment><USER21> Slides are a crutch (but I use them too) Much better if there are very brief (3-5 page) documents with clean multivariate visualizations as appropriate. Then discuss (This is what Tufte recommends). A nice multivariate visualization method is RadViz. The real metric is "Does it add value to the viewer?" If it is more of a presenter crutch, then get rid of it or boil the slides to the bare minimum. I tend to favor white boards and markers and ask the audience questions. But that is just my style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Could he maybe do the same for the general US budget?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a first step, its like saying out loud that we need to take visual communication more seriously. Hopefully his teachings can go viral, and effect all the people in the right places.

<comment><USER18> "I think this is a first step, its like saying out loud that we need to take visual communication more seriously. "

I'm inclined to believe this will only be applied to those topics the administration wants to sell to the public. I don't expect to ever see it applied to, for example, where tax dollars go.

<comment><USER22> Seriously, they publish this every year in all the detail you could possibly want.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget>

And if you think that the White House is trying to hide it, here:

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget_fy2009_default/>

<comment><USER18> Point taken. However, my point (not well expressed) is that no adminsitration has gone out of their way to ensure that citizens really understand the financrs of their government. The data are there, but, for example, those links for the OMB are hardly paragons of clarity.

There's is a _reason_ to hire someone like Tufte, and that is because a) this sort of data are hard to convey in all their nuance and import, and b) there's no one currently in place who is doing a good job of it.

<comment><USER23> We spend 12 years of public schooling trying to drill some rudimentary general knowledge about the world into the heads of people who couldn't give a shit about it, and only partially succeed. What makes you think that Ed Tufte can do the same job with a website, or with a cameo on some weekly YouTube addresses?

The data is available for people who care to inform themselves. Doing better than that seems to me like a pretty damn hard task in the short term.

<comment><USER24> Tufte is smarter than at least 99% of public school teachers, and he is one of the best humans alive at making accurate and concise visual explanations of complex data. It wouldn't be particularly surprising to see him succeed where others have failed, because he's better at this kind of thing than pretty much everybody who's tackled this problem before, and he is able to learn from the mistakes of previous attempts.

The data has always been accessible, for some definition of "accessible". The job of a guy like Tufte it to put it into a form where it doesn't take as much effort to spot patterns and other hidden trends. Essentially, he'll be trying to lower the barriers of entry to the "informed electorate".

<comment><USER10> However remember that he's only one member of a panel that advises the board that's actually going to be publishing stuff. We and I'm sure he have no idea how influential he's actually going to be.

How influential has Paul Volcker been?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well _this_ is going to be interesting!

I look forward to seeing how Tufte designs for an audience (the American people) more used to USA Today infographics.

<comment><USER26> I just love the gratuitous American bashing that we always see in these sorts of discussions.

Look, the average IQ on the planet is 100. Here, in England, in Germany. Education here isn't great, but it's not noticeably worst than in Mexico, Italy, or Russia. The American people aren't geniuses, one and all, but then again - who is?

I wouldn't complain about women, or blacks, or any other group for a trait that's common across all humans ("stupid women ... never saving enough for retirement!"), and I don't think that bemoaning folks by which country they were born into is any more appropriate.

<comment><USER25> Uh...I'm American and am intimately familiar with the level of statistical reasoning that informs our political discourse.

<comment><USER27> And what country does any better? "People" as a general class are woefully educated in statistics around the world, or at least all share the common ability to turn off their ability to make rational decisions based on statistical evidence whenever their favored group is not supported by the available statistical evidence.

<comment><USER28> Having lived for large amounts of time in both the UK and the US, I would say the level of political discourse in the UK _is_ generally higher than in the US (I attribute this mostly to a very strong and reasonably independent media in the UK that's really not afraid to hold feet to the fire and ask intelligent questions, and usually doesn't "dumb things down").

<comment><USER10> Was this true before 1986 (the Wapping dispute)?

In Gerald Warner's ... eulogy to Michael Foot, "champion of the closed shop" ([http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100028361/sto...](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100028361/stockholm- syndrome-rules-as-journalists-laud-michael-foot-champion-of-the-closed- shop/)), he relates this bit of relevant history:

" _One day in the mid-1970s, shortly after having a comment article published in the Daily Telegraph and while I was wondering, with the enthusiasm of youth, if journalism might be my métier, I bumped into an official of the NUJ who rejoiced in the title of "Father of the Chapel", or some such quasi- masonic honorific, who told me he had seen the piece. "I hope you are remembering," he said, "you are only allowed to publish two pieces a year (or perhaps it was a couple more) without an NUJ card… And just try getting one, you Tory b——," he added with a sardonic laugh._ "

On the other hand I don't know squat about ITV and any other independent electronic media, and there's always magazines like _The Economist_ which I hope didn't also live in a closed shop environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do these people receive renumeration for the time they spend on the panel?

<comment><USER14> s/renumeration/remuneration/

<comment><USER29> whoops. I should have just asked outright: how much will Tufte get paid?

<comment><USER5> Is this question a preparation to accuse him of being an unethical shill if his findings disagree with your ideological predispositions?

Because it really sounds like you're gearing up to find a reason to dismiss his message if it doesn't mesh with your preconceived ideas.

<comment><USER29> I want to know how much money I can get paid by the government when I finish my PhD in statistics.

<comment><USER30> <http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Statistician/Salary>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> wow.

<comment><USER31> please accept my apologies for a non-substantive comment.</comment></comment>


Winklevoss twins expect first quarter debut of Bitcoin exchange - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/26/us-winklevoss-exchange-idUSKBN0KZ2N220150126

<comment><USER2> That last quote in the "article" (PR release) is far more informative than the rest of the words combined. Welcome to phase 2 of their strategy to infuse artificial confidence in Bitcoin so they can cash out of the $11 mill in BC that have been stagnating since they purchased them back in 2013. Winkdex was phase 1.

I mean, I get it, one doesn't need an Econ degree from Harvard to connect the dots on this scheme that adds absolutely zero value to the world at large. There has to be some sort of Wall Street Wheel-of-pump-and-dump in finance/econ rings where they spin to decide which "investment vehicle" they want to use to transfer money from retail investors into their pockets.

<comment><USER3> If they wanted out why wouldn't they just sell it on the open market?

<comment><USER4> Selling $11M in bitcoin on the open market would likely crash the market. According to blockchain.info, the average day sees about ~7M USD of bitcoin traded. Not to mention any of the negative signaling if people got wind of the sale.

<comment><USER3> Obviously they would not sell it all at once. If you're speculating they'd put many months of effort into an ETF, there's no reason they couldn't alternatively spread their sells out over many months, meaning it'd account for only a fraction of the volume.

Making an ETF just to cash out doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER5> If you read the ETF S1 filings you'll see that they plan on charging fees to maintain accounts for investors. It will be an ongoing profitable operation to run, not just a one-time cashout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Beat to the punch yet again

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, then let's wait until then to report the debut. This hype over nothing is dumb.

</comment><comment><USER8> Next step: sue Coinbase for stealing the idea of creating a US-based Bitcoin exchange.

</comment><comment><USER9> Let's hope it's not HTTP & JSON

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://exchange.coinbase.com/](https://exchange.coinbase.com/)</comment>