A Mutual Fund Master, Too Worried to Rest - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/business/john-bogle-vanguards-founder-is-too-worried-to-rest.html

<comment><USER3> _Burton Malkiel, the Princeton economist and author of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street," says: "Index funds are so popular now that it's easy to forget how courageous and tenacious Jack Bogle was in starting them._ They were called Bogle's Folly because all they did was replicate the returns of the market. _But, of course, that's a great deal. In the academic world many people saw the wisdom of this — but Jack is the guy who actually made it happen."_

Vanguard is really an inspiring company, which is all the more remarkable because of the industry they're in.

Apart from pioneering index funds, and from their strategy of observing a Nader-esque duty of loyalty to their customers, Vanguard is also unique because of its ownership structure, which is upside-down from what every other big mutual fund company uses: the funds themselves own The Vanguard Group (the company, which provides services to the funds), which mitigates an obvious principal/agent problem at financial firms.

<comment><USER4> It's important to note that they didn't open on Wall Street, instead they started in Valley Forge, PA. At the time it was seen as another bullet point which could be used against Vanguard ever becoming successful.

I mean who in their right mind started a company creating investment vehicles that wasn't at least in New York City?!!?

<comment><USER5> Maybe Fidelity? PIMCO? Humble Warren B. of Omaha. Lots of other examples. Money is universal...like love. Kind of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are some important ideas in here. The truth is that a number aspects of finance are simply broken, and being heavily gamed for very short term gains (the Facebook IPO is an excellent example of some of this).

The reality right now, is that for the vast majority of people (anyone sub $500k in investable assets) getting the kind of quality advice needed to navigate the complexities of investing is virtually impossible. This type of high-touch service is almost exclusively reserved for the high net-worth marketplace.

In a bear market like this one the likelihood that the returns of most mid- level advisor's and fund managers will outperform the management fees is not exceptionally high. This is why Vanguard's funds have received so much attention recently, they are a relatively safe, and very, very low cost, which addresses a big problem in this market.

That being said, they don't perform exceptionally well either, at least not by themselves as a strategy. Investing in the value of the stock market is a volatile strategy in the best of times, and completely fruitless in the worst. Value investing has to be balanced by an income generation strategy, usually one focused on equities that pay solid dividends and other income-generating investments.

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment- ide...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/five- reasons-to-love-dividend-growth-investing/article535865/)

Even armed with that information, the truth is that people should ideally not be put in a position of managing their own finances. They regularly work against themselves, have emotional attachments to their losses and gains and often make out no better than a gambler. This is work for professionals in a position of trust with their clients. Unfortunately, professionalism and likewise trust seems to be in short supply in finance right now.

Furthermore, most people are not really even interested in being 100% responsible for their own finances. They may want a enough of an understanding of things to have some piece of mind, but most are no more interested in managing their investments than they are in fixing their own car or filling their own cavities.

<comment><USER7> Most people feel the inevitable urge to gamble in the stock market. Some advisers advocate a 10% allocation to "stock picks" for this reason.

Personally, I feel that a smart and tasteful person can outguess Wall Street in areas he's an expert in. I don't think anyone could have predicted the meteoric rise of Apple, but I think plenty of nerds could have looked at Mac OS 10.1 back in the day and thought, "this is a good bet". The ideas is that Wall Street can efficiently price financials (except in speculative bubbles, but if can't judge if a stock is in a bubble then don't buy it!) but doesn't have the computer nerd expertise to judge the long-term viability of a product line or engineering culture. Along similar lines, I made a tidy profit in 2008 on banks because I knew a few people at these banks and knew which ones worked and which ones were dysfunctional at a high level--a sort of perfectly legal "insider" information. Of course when you do this stuff you're assuming risk.

<comment><USER8> > _I don't think anyone could have predicted the meteoric rise of Apple, but I > think plenty of nerds could have looked at Mac OS 10.1 back in the day and > thought, "this is a good bet"._

Honestly, this is why I'm skeptical I can beat the market. This was exactly me: I sat down at OS X Jaguar 10.2 and thought, "boy howdy this is great!" and bought Apple stock at less than $40/share.

But you know what? I was wrong. I made money, of course, but for the wrong reasons: the meteoric rise of Apple as a company was due almost entirely to the iPod and then-unannounced iPhone.

Nowadays, of course, after the increase in stature of the company, they're making money from their computers and laptops, but I'm not sure where Apple would be if they didn't make it big with those other products.

<comment><USER7> Investing in Apple back then would have been like investing in a startup-- investing in the engineering culture that made Mac OS X, not the product line itself. They were a company that secured a future from oblivion by making best-in-class stuff in a class with a huge upside for profit. I think a hacker could have seen potential that Wall Street did not.

And, like a startup, they took a number of swings before hitting the iOS home run, except they were also turning a modest profit during the swings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For anyone interested, I highly recommend David Swensen's book "Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment." Swensen is the highly successful manager of Yale's endowment. While no book on investing is without flaws, I have found it to be some of the most understandable, well-argued and supported advice around.

Short answer: he recommends a portfolio of low-cost index funds/ETFs covering several asset classes and regular rebalancing to target allocation weights. I have generally followed his advice to good effect using Vanguard index funds.

</comment><comment><USER10> What do people think of the permarment portfolio (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-Safe_Investing>). The proposal is to diversify your investments equally across stocks, bonds, gold and cash equivalents. The idea is that for any particular market condition (inflation, deflation, stagnation and growth), 3 of the asset classes won't do too well, while the fourth will do spectacularly well and average out the losses in the other 3. The other benefit (unlike simple stock/bond investing) is that the portfolio seems to be pretty immune to variance from start date (ie, while investing in the S&P has consistently yielded around 7-8% real returns, their is pretty high variance in this number depending on when you start the calculation). For example, here are some backtesting results showing that the portfolio averages 9.7% - [http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent- portfolio-...](http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio- historical-returns/), which is pretty competitive with 100% stock allocation.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll quote one of Berkshire Hathaway's early Insurance CEOs

> _There are no such things as bad risks; just bad rates_

The problem I perceive with most people and finance is that they simply do not think about it sensibly at all.

An example:

I love Coca Cola (the soft drink). But it costs $3 a can right now. I will wait until it is $1 and buy up as much as I possibly can. I'll get more value that way.

Now a stock market example:

Coca Cola (the stock) just fell 75% to $1 a share, I won't buy it because the market is clearly telling me something (during a economic crisis). Oh wait it just went up to $3 - I will now buy.

That's insane. But that's how it works. Think of stocks like computers, tablets, food and clothes. Just buy good quality ones cheap and know that they money you put in is never coming back out.

Index funds get one thing right - buy cheap, don't sell and know the money you put in is untouchable. But they get another thing wrong - <USER2> doesn't exist.</comment>


Show HN: TimePanel: Incredibly fast time tracking and invoicing - <AUTHOR> http://timepanel.net/

<comment><USER2> Definitely seems fast. Looks like the demo is using cached js but never actually update to the server? I created a new project and clicked "Save", and got the spinning icon that never went away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, we turned off server syncing for the demo. You'll see identical speed in the real app though. Both the demo and real version use local data stores to read and write data, server syncing happens in the background. Moving forward, that will also serve as the foundation for enabling offline functionality.

I'll start working on getting projects to save for the demo.

Thanks for giving it a test drive!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. This is a nights and weekends product that's the result of turning my own small, private time tracking and invoicing tool into my first launched product. I've had a blast building this; I'm looking forward to any feedback the community can provide.

<comment><USER3> Product undoubtedly looks and works great (at least from a basic skim). My only issue with it is the pricing matrix which caps the # of clients. I do some small time freelance work and i definitely have more than 10 clients overall. So, does the pricing indicate that the freelance level can only do 10 clients at any given time? Is there a way to record historical results?

Note that I wouldn't mind paying 15/month for the unlimited version, but I am just saying that paying monthly for 10 clients seems a bit off in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the positive words! To answer your questions:

Yes, the Freelancer plan only allows up to 10 clients at any given time. That means if you've entered 10 clients, and want to add another, you'll either need to upgrade, or delete a client. The pricing being based on the # of clients is just 1 option we considered. Might another metric be more useful to you? We'd love feedback in regard to that: support-at-timepanel.net.

As to whether there is a way to record historical results, can you clarify? Perhaps you're asking how to import past clients, projects, or invoices? If so, we're working on an import tool right now; it's a big priority (i.e. others are asking about this as well) and we're hoping to get that out in the next week or two.

Does that help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do check for Replicon's easy to use employee time tracking (<http://www.replicon.com/time-tracking-softwares.aspx>) software. It pretty simple to use and quick to implement.</comment>


Check your router for open ports - <AUTHOR> http://www.checkmyrouter.org/ This site allows you to check your router for open ports and common vulnerabilities such as the upnpbug. Neat. <comment><USER2> Is Steve Gibson's "Shields Up" still valid? It's what I always use. <https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2>

<comment><USER3> Does he still write all of his applications in assembly? I always loved how enthusiastic he was about his products and SpinRite was a very helpful tool back before everything I had went to SSD.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys, yeah sorry it seems the server is kind of busy now. Cool...ill raise some limits.

<comment><USER4> The server is definitely overloaded, and at a time when most of the U. S. is either in bed or thinking about heading home from the bar (except me, obviously). Granted, the rest of the awakened world can put the hurt on your server, but I'd prepare for when the East Coast wakes up. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using GRC Shields Up all along; would like to try this one too. But, I keep getting this:

 _Sorry, but the monkey that does the scanning is kind of busy at the moment. Try again later!_

<comment><USER6> Same here...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alternatively — <http://portscan.me/>

<comment><USER8> It's rather disappointing that this doesn't default to using nmap's -PN option, since they can be reasonably sure that the host actually is up (after all, it just requested the web page). Not all routers respond to ping.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok ill change this, as soon as the storm is over...check back tomorrow :-)

<comment><USER8> I was talking about portscan.me, not checkmyrouter.org - unless you happen to run both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure the design of the website matches what it does. It'll probably scare or at least worry a few people into thinking open ports are scary and bad.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh and yes, id like to built something similar to ShieldsUp - let me know if anyone is interested to join and help coding

<comment><USER10> Any advantages to using this other than ShieldsUp (which has been around longer than I've probably been alive)?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks cooler - and eventually shall have more features and better explanations. Isn't a bit of change always a good thing :-)

<comment><USER11> Sure, but don't just steal the Shields Up content! Your description of port scans has been copy-pasted from Shields Up. Your disclaimer text is identical except that "Shields Up" is replaced by "CheckMyRouter"...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm thanks for that feedback. The site is really just getting started so certainly there are some rough edges; will rewrite the disclaimer part and shorten it while i'm at it.

PS: Updated the common portscan description. Also, feel free to get in touch and make it better / more useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems infinitely useful, but "the monkey that does the scanning is kind of busy at the moment. Try again later!"

</comment><comment><USER13> WOW this thing's awesome. Didn't know i had that many ports open :)

</comment><comment><USER14> sounds like they are confused about what routers are. unless they are using traceroute.

<comment><USER15> It's a common language version of "router", not the sysadmin one.

<comment><USER14> It doesn't take a sysadmin to use at least approximately correct terminology for basic networking concepts (I'm not one).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Site seems down. HN Effect?

</comment><comment><USER17> Where is the "Yet Another" Prefix???

</comment><comment><USER18> what a stupid protocol</comment>


How American schools fail kids with dyslexia - <AUTHOR> https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/09/11/hard-to-read <comment><AUTHOR> Followup reporting:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/11/591504959/rethink...](https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/11/591504959/rethinking- how-students-with-dyslexia-are-taught-to-read)</comment>


Rome's Subway Expansion Reveals Artifacts From The Ancient Past - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/07/22/630532760/romes-subway-expansion-reveals-artifacts-from-the-ancient-past <comment><USER3> The really funny thing about doing any construction work in basically any Italian city is that you already know from the start that there is going to be several years of delay due to finding ancient stuff...

But it's impossible to dig all of that out (reasons: too big, too disruptive, no funds, happens everywhere, etc). So what usually happens is: take pictures, save some artifact, cover with concrete and go on with the works.

<comment><USER4> What a damn shame.

<comment><USER5> What's the alternative--people stop developing Istanbul, Rome, etc entirely? I can't say I'm entirely unsympathetic to a population that wants development over marginally better understanding of places that already experience high levels of excavation and historical tourism.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's valuable. Archaeologists come in and determine if the area has any historical value or advances our understanding of the ancient past. If it does, construction stops while the finds are uncovered. If not, then continue on.

Finding yet another clay pot in Rome, one of the largest centers of population with one of the longest and most complete historical records of anywhere in the ancient world, is probably not going to be of much historical value.

In an age where you can buy 10 Roman coins on Amazon for $25 and have them delivered to your house in two days with Prime shipping, the value of common ancient Roman artifacts is made abundantly clear.

<comment><USER7> It's valuable (think about revenues from tourism) but we still have to live our lives. The ancients built on top of anything was there before. That's why we have so many archeological layers in Rome.

<comment><USER8> It's not valuable if all they find is standard roman clay pot # 123,312 to 124,312.

There was an article about this when they were building the tunnel in Istanbul. They did find some significant stuff, but the vast majority of it was stuff they already had tons of. They literally filled warehouses with the stuff, and dumped most of it back in because it was not rare or significant.

<comment><USER9> IIRC there's literally a hill in Rome that is just ancient olive oil amphorae (clay jars) shards.

<comment><USER10> Monte dei Cocci aka Testaccio - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testaccio](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testaccio)

Clubbing and nightlife area now, nice place...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In Amsterdam they recently started the new subway line and they put items from underwater in one of the stations. I can't express enough how cool it looks like[https://www.google.nl/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/International...](https://www.google.nl/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/International/stone- axes-cellphones-project-examines-amsterdams-history- junk/story%3Fid%3D56339929?source=images)

<comment><USER12> That's fun. Neolithic all the way to cell phones. It's a neat reminder how far we've come and how short our lives are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I saw a joke headline last time I was in Rome that went something like "C Line construction halted to excavate ancient remains of C Line construction"

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting. I really like that they're displaying the things they found in the stations rather than just carting them away to the basement of some museum.

<comment><USER15> Museums in Rome would throw them out, their basements are _already_ full.

I know it's controversial, but I personally think that there should be the possibility for the State to sell (or "permanently loan" for money) significant amounts of minor artifacts to other nation-states. Countries like the US, Britain or Australia would build academic cathedrals around the crappiest 1% of the stuff we have to stockpile in Italy.

<comment><USER16> In many cases that is possible when the dig was financed by another institution. The 4000 yo Egyptian "dioramas" they have on display at the met have been split between NYC and Cairo, because it was an American-led archaeological survey that found them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of what I consider one of the most beautiful scenes in film from Federico Fellini's Roma [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjtst- Vr87A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjtst-Vr87A)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's weird how our great^5 grandchildren will only find treasures in our dumps, but the cities will still be full of ancient stuff.

<comment><USER16> It's also that the Romans thought they were going to be around forever so they built everything to last.

If you look at the Colosseum, it looks the way it is because it was willfully destroyed and used for construction material over centuries: when Rome became the seat of the Papacy, the Colosseum was remembered as a place where the early martyrs were slaughtered by wild beasts, not as a nice building to be preserved for tourists.

On the other hand many Roman bridges throughout Europe still stand and some are still in use (yes even by cars). But the really amazing case is the Pantheon, that was turned into a church early on and preserved and restored for almost 2000 years. It's true that not all we see is original, but the structural engineering is.

<comment><USER19> The Pantheon is one of the most impressive buildings I have ever seen. The light coming through the top is just incredible.

<comment><USER20> Random tangent: As much as I love living in sunny California, it saddens me that due to earthquakes, nothing we build here will still be around in 2,000 years.

<comment><USER21> That's only because the construction isn't as sturdy. Italy routinely experiences earthquakes similar in magnitude to California.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Stupid question: how come so much stuff is buried? Tombs of course. But why do we keep finding other stuff under several meters of earth? It's not like if there are sand storms in Rome like there are in Egypt. And many of these areas have been inhabited continuously since ancient Rome.

<comment><USER23> > how come so much stuff is buried? Tombs of course.

No, that's not the reason. Rather it is the case that through most of human history new buildings were built on top of the rubble of earlier buildings destroyed in a fire, sacking, earthquake, or in very early times the simple accumulation of trash. In many parts of the Middle East finding a lost city is as easy as looking for a hill that has no geological business being there and digging. People living in the same place over thousands of years is what makes the hill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The straight text version: [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=630532760](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=630532760)

</comment><comment><USER25> Southern California faces a similar challenge. There are many interesting fossils and any sizable work site is going to find something. Usually it just gets surreptitiously trashed, but occasionally it's something so awesome the builders actually follow the law.

</comment><comment><USER26> Chrome Canary gives a https warning:

       NET::ERR_CERT_SYMANTEC_LEGACY
       Subject: www.npr.org
       Issuer: Symantec Class 3 ECC 256 bit EV CA - <USER2>
       Expires on: 17 Nov 2019
       Current date: 27 Jul 2018

</comment><comment><USER15> Sad that this great trove will end up with a name linked to one of the most shameful pages of Italian history [1], just because postwar politicians in Rome didn't have the guts to do the right thing and rip colonial-era names from the map.

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

<comment><USER27> That is just one of the atrocities my country committed in the past [1]. I would rather keep these names, in the hope young people who cannot ask their grandparents anymore dig the terms and get some information before they're sucked into embracing neo fascist ideologies spread by Facebook groups as it is happening right now.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_war_crimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_war_crimes)</comment></comment>