In some countries, there’s a cultural aversion to wearing seatbelts. But why not? Seatbelts save lives!

In the land of anti-maskers, how did Americans start wearing seatbelts in the first place? I found a 1997 article from the LA Times, more than 10 years after many states adopted mandatory seat belt laws. People’s objections were very similar to today’s objections about wearing a mask!

Here are some good quotes from the article. For fun, I decided to substitute the phrase “seat belts” with “masks”.

Hard-core resistance to [masks] is widespread and persistent. Many young men rebel, convinced of their own invincibility. Peer pressure sometimes makes wearing a [mask] unfashionable. Many find the straps physically annoying or confining. Others simply forget to [mask] up when in a rush. Some avoid [masks] because they wrinkle their clothes.

Yet motorists are twice as likely to die in a serious crash if not [masked] up. Even a modest increase in [mask] usage over the next decade could save an estimated 40,000 lives and reduce medical costs by $60 billion.

With such high stakes in mind, the Clinton administration has begun a concerted push to increase the use of [masks], recognized as the single most effective vehicle safety device. The goal is 85% by 2000, up from government estimates of 62% to 68%.

The federal government’s main strategy: pressuring states to adopt tougher mandatory [mask] laws, which are known to be effective in changing people’s habits. Indeed, California’s strict laws are credited with making the state the leader in [mask] usage, at a rate of 87%.

Besides tougher state laws, not much else can convert hard-core non-[maskers], many safety advocates say. Even tragic events — such as the death of Princess Diana, who was riding in the back of her vehicle [unmasked] — do not cause wholesale behavior changes.

In pushing people to [mask] up, the administration faces a battle against not just human nature but political flak from both the right and left. Libertarians bristle at government intervention and civil rights groups warn that stronger [mask] laws give authorities more opportunity to harass minority drivers. Further, most Americans see the auto as the ultimate symbol of individual freedom and wearing a [mask] as a matter of personal choice.

NHTSA Administrator Ricardo Martinez calls the low [mask] use in this country “pathetic,” noting that many other industrialized countries, including Canada, Australia and Germany, all have usage rates above 90%.

Even within the U.S., [mask] use varies widely — from a low of 43% in North Dakota, a rural state with lax enforcement, to above 80% in California, New Mexico and North Carolina.

Non-[maskers] present a polyglot profile. Generally, [mask] use is tied to age, risk predilection and education, NHTSA studies show. Men younger than 25 are the least likely to use [masks]. Women are more likely than men to [mask] up. Better-educated, higher-paid suburban dwellers [mask up] more than blue-collar city residents. Pickup owners shun [masks] more than car drivers.

Robert McCarren, a 28-year-old hardware store clerk in Taylor, Mich., said he has never worn a [mask] because no one in his family ever has. Despite being ticketed two weeks ago for speeding and driving without a [mask], he said he will continued to ride unrestrained.

The barrel-chested McCarren said he finds [masks] confining. “I just don’t like the strap hanging around my neck,” he explained, adding that he worries about being able to get the [mask] unhooked in a panic situation, such as a burning car.

The NAACP, the strongest civil rights group in Detroit, opposes tougher [mask] laws.

“It would just be another tool in the box for police to pull someone over who has a certain look or fits a profile,” said the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the local NAACP chapter.

Farmers offer the strongest opposition in the state to [mask] laws. The Michigan Farm Bureau, which represents 154,000 farmers, opposes any expansion of police powers, including tougher [mask] laws, wiretapping and sobriety checkpoints.

“We feel a primary [mask] measure is an unwarranted expansion of police powers, an intrusion of individual rights,” said Farm Bureau lobbyist Howard Kelley.

This libertarian stance resonates in Michigan’s rural areas, where militia groups have sprouted up. Says John Hudak, a self-described libertarian from Waterford, Mich.: “If I want to kill myself, that’s my business. It’s not the government’s job to save people from their own stupidity.”

[Mask] advocates argue that the decision to not buckle up ultimately affects everyone through higher taxes, medical costs and insurance premiums, as well as higher business expenses.

On average, the hospital costs for an [unmasked] victim are 50% higher than for a [masked] one, according to federal studies. Taxpayers pay some of those costs through Medicaid and Medicare.

“It’s hard to talk to me about individual rights when you have your hand in my pocket,” said Martinez of the NHTSA.

Wear a Seatbelt. Save a Life! was originally published in Edward Jiang on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At its core, money is a tool. And like all tools, money can be both constructive and destructive. A hammer is a useful tool and can help you assemble solid furniture, but if misused, can result in injury. Similarly, money can empower you, or hurt you by chaining you down. That’s why it’s so important to learn how to use money: so you can use the tool when needed.

Many people who blog about personal finance love to preach about their lifestyle. This post is not one of them. Many personal finance writers try to sell their lifestyle. Since everyone’s different, I try not to make that assumption. The goal of this post is to give you a basic framework for thinking about your money, and empower you to live your life!

So, what exactly is money?

Money is a very abstract concept. We all know the feeling of a crisp new $20 bill, or the swipe of a credit card, but what exactly is money?

“Time is money” — an old adage

This is one way to think about money. If you have $3,000 in the bank, and you earn $30/hr, you could say that something you buy for $300 is worth 10 hours of your time . With your time, you can earn money.

So if you hear someone talking about budgeting their money, they’re asking: “what do I want to do with my time?” Do I want to spend all my time on an awesome apartment? Travelling the world? Instagrammable food? Or something else?”

Budgeting is not something you do to artifically constrain yourself. Budgeting shouldn’t make yourself miserable. Budgeting allows you to review how you are spending your time, and ensure it’s in line with how you want to live your life.

Buying Flexibility

Unlike time, money can be accumulated to be used in the future. Thus, you can use your money to buy flexibility, simply by not spending it. If you’re unsure about your future plans, saving your money can give you a lot more freedom and flexibility. Decisions to go to grad school, move to another city are easy to make when you have thousands in the bank.

At the very least, consider using your first few paychecks to save up an emergency fund. With an emergency fund, if your car breaks down, you feel safe knowing that you can get it repaired. You can move to a new city for a job without worrying about how to pay for moving costs. And if you need to make a large purchase, like a car or laptop, you can always draw from your emergency fund to pay for it.

It’s hard to argue against the usefulness of an emergency fund. But, how much you save, and when you withdraw from it is up to you. You should evaluate your risk tolerance and job stability and decide how much to save. Many people save between 3–6 months of spending cash, to have a reasonable buffer.

Income Tax

As you earn your first few paychecks, you may notice that your employer has helpfully paid the US government for you. How helpful! But how do taxes really work?

The United States income tax is a progressive tax: the more you earn, the more you pay. It’s implemented via a marginal tax rate. For 2016, your income is taxed like this:

• Your first $9,275: 10%
• Your next $28,375: 15%
• Your next $53,500: 25%
• Your next $99,000: 28%

The more you earn, the more you get taxed! However, this is only on the extra amounts you make. You might hear people complaining “oh, I’m getting a raise, but will lose more in taxes”, but that’s completely untrue. If you earned $60,000 in 2016, you’d calculate your taxes like this:

• 10% * $9,275= $928
• 15% * $28,375 = $4,256
• 25% * $22,350 = $5,588
• Total: $10,772

Every year, you’ll need to “do your taxes”. You’ll submit paperwork to the IRS detailing how much money you earned, and how much tax you owe. Since you’ve already paid some through your employer, you’ll net out the difference. The IRS will send you a check if you’ve overpaid, or vice versa if you underpaid.

Most of you will submit your tax paperwork into tax software, like TaxAct or TurboTax. Not so surprisingly, you usually get a refund. But why? It’s simple: tax deductions!

The IRS allows taxpayers to claim tax deductions and reduce their taxable income. Your taxable income is your full income minus your tax deductions. Tax law is complicated, so I’ll try to give a basic overview of how tax deductions work.

There are two ways of calculating how much to deduct from your income, and you’ll have to pick between the two. (Usually, tax software will automatically pick the one that saves you the most money).

The first method is called the standard deduction. The standard deduction is very simple: it’s one number! The 2016 standard deduction is $6,300 for individuals.

Alternatively, you can choose to use itemized deductions on your tax return. This is where you list deductions that you’re allowed to claim, and add up the total. Some common examples are: state income tax, mortgage interest, and charitable donations. You probably do not have a mortgage or make large charitable contributions. So, you’ll usually take the standard deduction. As you get older, this may change.

There are also other taxes, like social security, medicare, and state income tax. They will also affect your final tax return, but are beyond the scope of this post. However, this should be enough for you to have a basic understanding about your taxes.

Investing Your Money

After working for a while, you’ll have saved an emergency fund, and can now direct your money towards other uses. You might have heard people suggest that you invest your money. But what is investing?

Cash is not the only way of storing value. In fact, it’s actually a really bad way of storing value. In 1908, a Hershey’s bar cost just $0.02. Today, grocery stores sell candy bars for $1.49. That’s 75 times as expensive! Most currencies have a tendency to inflate, meaning that they get less valuable over time.

Investing your money allows you to trade your cash for assets.

What is an asset?

An asset is something you can own that generates income. For instance, stocks, real estate, and bonds are all assets.

Think back to the fairy tale about the goose that laid golden eggs. If you owned one yourself, what would happen? It’d lay golden eggs, and over time you’d accumulate gold. Wouldn’t you want to own one?

Unfortunately, the golden goose is mythical. But assets are real, and do generate cash. Companies generate profits for stock holders. Apartment buildings generate rent payments for its owners.

Cash doesn’t generate cash. It just sits in your bank account, decaying in value.

What should I invest in?

First off, you are an asset, and a very valuable one at that. You, by being physically and mentally able, earn income through your career. Anything that can improve your career is a terrific investment — especially since you’re still young.

So the first thing you should invest in, is yourself. Make sure that you’re healthy, by eating and sleeping well. Spend time and money to develop more skills and experiences. If those result in a raise or a promotion, that’s a dramatic impact for the next few decades of your life.

Stocks

When you own stock, you own a fraction of a company: their inventory, real estate, and most of all, bank account. Most companies turn a profit, and when they do, their cash holdings increase.

Smaller companies will usually reinvest that money into improving their business. Larger companies, however, decide to pay dividends, returning extra cash to their shareholders. Apple, one of the largest companies in the world, paid over 12 Billion dollars in dividends in 2016. Wouldn’t you like to buy that golden goose?

Don’t get me wrong, there’s also risk involved with investing. Market sentiment can change the stock price. You could also pick the wrong stock. So how can you counteract these risks?

The first risk, market sentiment, is hard to counteract. When people don’t like a company, they won’t buy the stock, decreasing its share price. Like the weather, sentiment changes on a daily basis. However, sentiment doesn’t change the actual performance of a company. It’s not worth worrying about random ups and downs.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to avoid the risk of picking a bad stock pick. Don’t pick a specific stock! Most investors utilize index funds, which invest in a large number of companies across industries and geographies. When investing with an index fund, you’re not tied to the performance of a single company. As long as the economy as a whole is generating revenue, you’ll be fine over the long run. Over a long period of time, stocks return ~7% annually.

Investing Pays Off

But how much can a 7% annual return really pay off? While it may not seem like a lot, the gains involved with investing are counterintuitive. When you invest, your money grows faster and faster over time. Your gains aren’t linear; they’re exponential.

Remember that golden goose? After purchasing your first goose, it’ll start laying golden eggs. And after enough time, you’ll have enough money to buy a second goose. Hurrah! But wait the same amount of time, and you’ll have enough money to buy not one goose, but two geese! And then four! And then eight! Over time, the geese multiply faster and faster, just like your investments. When your money grows by the same percent each year, it multiplys quicker and quicker.

But enough talking: let’s demonstrate what happens when you save early. Let’s look at the tale of two college grads: Bill and Steve.

Bill graduates college and start saving $5,000 a year, for the first 10 years. After having kids, he stops saving entirely. Steve, however, saves nothing for a decade. After 10 years, he gets married and decides to start saving $5,000 a year for retirement, and continues until he turns 65.

When they both turn 65, who has more money? Bill has saved a total of $50,000, and Steve a total of $165,000. Surely Steve has more money?

It turns out, compounding at 7% annually, Bill’s $50,000 will multiply and turn into a total of $644,000, while Steve’s $165,000 turns into $594,000. That’s a full $50,000 less! In fact, if Steve wants to catch up with Bill, he will have to save until he’s 83 years old!

Investing early pays off, and it’s a wise decision to start early. If you’d like to explore this data more, check out this Google Spreadsheet.

Investing for Retirement

In the United States, several programs help people save for retirement. The most common are the 401(k) and the IRA. They provide a structured way for you to save for retirement, and give you additional tax benefits for investing. In exchange, you’re not allowed to withdraw from these accounts until you turn 59 1/2. Let’s talk about how they work, and why they can help you secure your future.

The tax benefits associated with these programs are rather lucrative. For most Americans, investing in a 401(k) or IRA allow you to avoid paying income tax on your contributions. If you contribute $100 and are in the 25% tax bracket, that money would have been $75 without. That’s like a 33% gain, instantly!

Larger employers will also match what you put into your 401(k). For instance, your employer might match up to $100/mo in contributions. That means that the $100 you contributed instantly becomes $200! Would you rather have $75 in your pocket today, or $200 for retirement? The math becomes even easier if you factor in growth from investing, state taxes, etc.

While you lose the ability to access your money until retirement, some people appreciate that constraint. One of my friends mentioned that they would probably have spent their 401(k) money on frivolous things, if it was not in a separate, protected account. Retirement accounts can be a powerful tool to help you invest, while giving you concrete benefits for doing so.

Credit Cards

If you don’t already have a credit card, you should consider applying for one. Unless you have really bad self control, credit cards are an essential tool to help you manage your personal finances, as they provide you with additional flexibility and financial benefits.

Cash back and other benefits

Most credit cards have cash back programs to encourage you to spend on the card — a 1% rate is typical. Some cards, namely, the Citi DoubleCash, even give you 2% back on all purchases! If you spend $1,000/mo on your credit card, you will recieve $240 in rewards over the course of a year. That’s a meaningful amount of cash, and a great reason to use a credit card.

Additionally, most credit cards give consumers additional benefits to encourage spend. Standard benefits usually include:

• Fraud protection — someone stole your card? Call the bank and they will reverse all the charges.
• Warranty extension—bought a new laptop? Your credit card company will add a year to your warranty for free.
• Rental Car Insurance — damage your rental car? You’re insured for free: your credit card company will cover the costs.
• Return protection — store refuses to return the item? The credit card company will give you your money back.
• Theft / Accidental damage protection — lose the item, or drop it by accident? You’re insured for the first 90 days!
• Price protection — did the price go down? The credit card company will refund the difference, if the store doesn’t.

That’s phenomenal.

How Credit Cards Work

So how do credit cards work? Why will credit card companies give you all of these benefits just to use them?

Credit cards were originally introduced as a way for businessmen to run tabs at restauraunts. Instead of paying at the end of a meal, they’d use their credit card, and get a bill at the end of the month. Credit cards were a lot more convenient than carrying cash or checks everywhere! For this convenience, merchants paid the credit card company a percentage of every transaction.

Modern credit cards are not very different. At the end of every month, you’ll recieve a bill for the money you spent. You can pay in full the full bill, but you can also choose to pay a small fraction, and leave the rest of the bill for later. By doing so, you take a loan from your bank, and agree to pay the rest of the bill back, with interest.

Interest is a fee paid to lenders for using their money. For credit cards, a typical interest rate is ~15% per year. This is a very high rate, so don’t borrow money from your credit card! It does not make sense to pay interest except in extreme emergencies. Instead, set your credit cards to autopay your bill in full, and spend the money you have.

Credit Reports

Even when paying your credit card in full, you are technically still borrowing money from the bank. Every lender tracks your payment history in your credit report, which is shared with other banks. Since you’re paying regularly and on time, you’ll build a positive credit score. Banks love lending money to people with good credit scores, which mean that it’ll be easier for you to buy a home or car loan in the future. Woot, responsibility!

Extra Liquidity

One last reason to use credit cards — you’ll get additional breathing room in your finances. Credit card companies give you 21 days to pay the bill — 21 days where you’ve already spent the money, but don’t have to pay! Furthermore, since the bill is sent at the end of every month, you, on average, spent the money 15 days prior. This means that you get to borrow money for a total of 36 days, interest free.

If you spend $1,000 a month on credit cards, you’ll have roughly $1,200 more in the bank, for free, courtesy of your credit card company. On the same principle as your emergency fund, having this extra cash in the bank allows you for more flexibility with how you manage your money.

Hope this helps!

I know this has been a lengthy post, but I hope this covers a lot of the questions that you may have when starting your first job.

This is my first post in this area, but I’m really interested in writing more about personal finance as time goes on. Interested in more? Ping me with questions! I’ll answer on Medium, or on Twitter @EdwardStarcraft!

Thanks to Linda Yuan, David Stoyanov, Tyler Menezes, and Dan Friedman for helping me review this post before publication.

What I Wish I Knew About Money Before My First Job was originally published in Edward Jiang on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As I planned my transition out of StudentRND, I planned to get a full time job at a medium (~20–500 people) sized company. Since I’ve always been a self-starter and an entrepreneur, entrepreneurs like Rand Fishkin, Glenn Kelman, James Sun, and T. A. McCann inspired me, and I wanted a direct opportunity to work next to other experienced entrepreneurs.

In addition, working at a more established company would allow me to spend more time on myself, while also allowing me to improve my work/life balance. At StudentRND, I didn’t have great work/life balance because of several reasons (of course, being at any startup is hectic).

StudentRND started as an out-of-school activity while I was going to UW, and many of our activities were on evenings/weekends. As a student, you’re used to working on homework and studying during the evenings and weekends, so working during those times felt normal. When I left UW to work on StudentRND full time, that habit prevailed. When we started running CodeDay, many of our volunteers and regional managers were students — meaning I had to work evenings and weekends to stay in sync.

Ultimately, I started leaving my weekends open to spend time rediscovering my love for skiing, hang out with my girlfriend, and hike on weekends again. However, there were always things to do for StudentRND.

Taking time off in the past two months made me realize that I really like working and creating things. So, after spending three weeks in China, I wasn’t surprised when I got the itch to start something new. That’s a topic for the next post, because this post is about my first month back in Seattle.

To start and grow an organization like StudentRND to its current size, you depend on a vast number of supporters, donors, mentors, and friends to make things possible. I can’t tell you how many times one of our connections helped us get a lucky break, and allowed StudentRND to continue operating and growing.

Being heads down in my work, I never had the chance to properly thank many of the people involved early on, and wanted to get a chance to do so. Paul Tamura from Physio-Control for giving us our first major grant, Al Stephan from Stratos for continuing support, Justin Taylor for mentoring me in sales, Red Russak for introducing me to a lot of the Seattle community, etc.

Entrepreneurs Dan Shapiro and Marc Barros sent out personalized mass emails to me earlier this year to promote their new companies — I decided to do the same, but instead, as a thank you note.

On the plane back from China, I went through my address book and curated a list of 200 people who really helped me succeed — participants, friends, mentors, donors, or colleagues — and thanked them, inviting them to meet up and reconnect. If you didn’t get this email, here it is (and feel free to schedule some time to meet):

Hey [NAME],

Last month, I finished my last full time day at StudentRND, having transitioned Tyler Menezes into my role as Executive Director. This year, we’re hosting events in 26 cities, empowering thousands of students across the country to build things with technology. I can’t believe where StudentRND’s gone since starting in my basement in 2009.

As someone who’s helped make StudentRND a success, I’d like to thank you. If there’s anything I can do to help your ventures, please let me know.

I’m spending this October to plan my next adventure, as well as reconnect with friends, mentors, and colleagues. I would love to find some time to meet with you and reconnect!

Here’s my schedule: http://www.meetme.so/edjiang. Let me know when you’re free!

Thanks,

Edward Jiang

The response was phenomenal. 50 of the 200 people I emailed scheduled themselves on my calendar, and I spent my next three weeks fully booked, driving from meeting to meeting. Reconnecting with everyone allowed me to give back to the community, thank my past mentors and supporters, and see what everyone had been doing in the meantime. It also opened many doors — I’m working out of Madrona’s office because of it. I highly suggest anyone changing jobs to do what I did.

I also quickly became best friends with several friends from the past — and had a blast. We organized a trip to Vancouver, BC, brought a group to Pie Bar, and even built a hiking trail!

In my remaining free time, I worked on knocking through a giant reading list. Here are some books I read that I’d highly recommend:

Never Eat Alone — Keith Ferrazzi, ex-CMO at Deloitte, explains how to build and maintain great relationships. A lot of useful & actionable advice for those whose careers depend on relationships.

The $100 Startup — explores profiles of unlikely entrepreneurs from around the world that earned “$50,000 or more from a modest investment (in many cases, $100 or less)”. Gives a lot of great concrete examples of how to start doing your own thing as an entrepreneur.

Rework — a cool little book written by Jason Fried at 37signals, an atypical small business that created BaseCamp, Highrise, and popular web framework Ruby on Rails. A fun motivational book and interesting look into 37signals, although not as much actionable advice.

Venture Deals — Foundry Group Managing Director and TechStars founder Brad Feld explains the essential terms on a term sheet, what to watch out for when negotiating, and how VC funds work. A must-read for founders raising venture capital, although not as useful for seed-stage investments.

Want to stay in touch? Sign up for my TinyLetter, or follow me on Twitter.

Life After StudentRND — Back in Seattle was originally published in Edward Jiang on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m writing this blog post to talk more openly about my life and what’s next.

On August 18th, a major chapter of my life that started five years ago came to an end: I finished my last full time day at StudentRND.

In the next two weeks, my life drastically changed. I sent my ex-girlfriend to the airport (to go to law school), had my wisdom teeth removed, cleaned my room, and finally flew back to China to visit my grandparents, uncles, and aunts.

I stayed in China for three weeks. It’s always an eye-opening experience, since China develops at a breakneck speed. For instance, Beijing had four subway lines in 2007. Today, it has 17 lines with a daily ridership of 9.8M people, with 7 more lines under construction. Astonishing.

In comparison, Seattle’s first line opened in 2008, and is still under construction. Seattle’s second line (to Microsoft) will open in 2023!

It’s always fun seeing the weird stuff as well, like Helen Keller Sunglasses (a designer brand sold in every eye shop), to shock art store I’m F___ing It in the 798 art district (which sold pieces of dung, and Chairman ObaMAO stickers).

Unfortunately, my grandma fell ill during my stay, and I saw the less-pleasant side of living in China. I’m really not sure what would have happened if my aunt hadn’t been there with her. As they brought my grandma into the ER to do a CT scan, they asked my aunt: “can you lift her onto the bed to do the CT scan? No? OK, you’ll have to hire these guys to help. That’ll be 100¥.”

At one point, my grandma’s IV ran out, and we weren’t sure if it needed to be replaced. Since there were a dozen nurses sitting at the center of the room, we assumed they would take care of anything that needed to be done. We were wrong. Minutes later, a doctor walked by, saw the empty bottle, and scolded us. “It’s your responsibility to let us know when your IV runs out, since we can’t baby you! You’re terrible relatives for not telling us!”

That experience reminded me that no matter who you are, you still have to worry about healthcare, smog, overcrowding, and go in nice buildings that smelled like bathrooms. While China holds many opportunities, it’s no wonder China’s rich are emigrating to the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia.

I think Paul Graham explains it best when he says that Money is not Wealth, as “wealth is stuff [you] want…if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing to buy, it wouldn’t matter how much money you had.”

In my next post, I’m going to talk about my experience with my time off after returning to Seattle. Want to stay in touch? Sign up for my TinyLetter, or follow me on Twitter.

Life After StudentRND — China was originally published in Edward Jiang on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It turns out that many websites are loading content from Google’s CDN, or Facebook/Twitter APIs, which are blocked in China. This prevents the browser from rendering the entire webpage until the connection times out.

Let’s say you’re a Chinese netizen, and want to look at the Seattle Times. While some US media like the New York Times is blocked, the Seattle Times isn’t.

Here’s what happens:

Google Chrome reports that the DOM took 3.7 minutes to load! The majority of the time, Chrome was waiting for jQuery, Google+, and Facebook’s APIs to timeout. In addition, the site is partially broken, because jQuery is missing!

According to KISSmetrics, only 40% of your site’s visitors will abandon your site if it takes over 3 seconds to load. Imagine how many abandon your site if it takes 3.7 minutes! This means that the Seattle Times is effectively blocked for Chinese netizens.

Ironically, it takes 20.6 seconds for KISSmetrics’ blog post to load on my machine, because my browser is waiting for jQuery, Facebook, and Google’s Fonts:

These sites are totally OK with the Chinese Government, contain useful information for Chinese visitors, yet are basically inaccessible on China’s Internet!

Here’s the major things I’ve found to block the loading of content sites:

• Google Fonts
• jQuery from Google’s CDN
• Facebook, Google, Twitter APIs

Solutions

Unfortunately, there’s no ideal solution to fixing this. However, here are some ways you can fix it.

1. Use Alternatives to Google Fonts and Google’s CDN

jQuery recommends using its hosted copy on MaxCDN. Cloudflare-sponsored cdnjs works as well, although funnily the website is inaccessible due to its usage of Google Fonts API.

I’m not sure of a good alternative to Google Fonts though.

2. Asynchronously load javascript files, or include them at the footer

Putting your <script> tags right before the </body>, or asynchronously loading your files will work in some, but not all situations.

Any other ideas?

How Google’s CDN prevents your site from loading in China was originally published in Edward Jiang on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since the recent rise of Bitcoin’s price from ~$100 to ~$1,000 in the last month, speculators have driven the price of “Altcoins”, or Bitcoin alternatives up to lucrative prices as well. For example, Litecoin, the #2 alternative to Bitcoin, has risen from $4/coin to $30/coin, and another 30 coins have market caps of over $1 Million (Bitcoin is ~$10B).

While mining Bitcoins is very hard unless you have a decent amount of cash and are willing to buy specialized hardware, most Altcoins cannot be mined using specialized hardware since they use scrypt, a different hashing algorithm that’s more memory and processor intensive. This means that, if you have a gaming PC, you can profitably mine Altcoins.

For example, I have a three year old PC with a nVidia GTX 460, and I earn ~$1/day, and it heats my room! AMD cards are actually ~3x more efficient for mining, and so if you have one, you may want to try this out (A 5870 is 4x as fast). Here’s how to get started in 10 minutes.

Get a Bitcoin wallet

Sign up for one at Coinbase (this is a referral link, but you get $5 in Bitcoin if you purchase $100 in Bitcoin w/ this link). There are other alternatives out there, but this is the easiest way to get started.

Generate a Bitcoin Address

In Coinbase, go to Settings > Addresses. Generate an address, and name it “mining” or something.

Download the mining client

The best client for you to use is GUIMiner-Scrypt. It’s fast to get started. [EDIT: I am told the download link is down; use this mirror instead; it’s linked in the forum thread as a mirror]

If you want to experiment later, you can download cgminer (for AMD cards) or cudaminer (for nVidia cards). Or you can write your own mining client.

Configure the mining client

Unzip GUIMiner, and open GUIMiner.exe. nVidia users: Open File > New CUDA Miner > Name it “miner”. AMD users: Continue reading below.

Use these settings:

Host: middlecoin.com

Port: 3333

Username: [the bitcoin address you generated earlier]

Password: xyz (yes, literally xyz; Middlecoin does not use passwords)

AMD: Select your GPU in “GPU Defaults”, and you should get the rest of the settings automatically. If they don’t work well, you can refer to this wiki page for settings that have worked for others.

You’ve configured GUIMiner to use Middlecoin, a mining pool that automatically tasks your computer on mining the most profitable Altcoin (based on current exchange rates to Bitcoin), and sends your Coinbase account Bitcoin.

You don’t need a password because you’re sending directly to your account address.

Congrats! You’re mining!

Keep track of Middlecoin’s website. Your address should show up within 10 minutes if you’ve configured things correctly. If you earn more than 1 mBTC (~$1 at today’s exchange rate), Middlecoin will send the Bitcoin at 6:30PM Pacific to your Coinbase account, where you can save it, spend it directly online at places like Reddit, Humble Bundle, donate it to the EFF, or convert into cash!

Want to learn more?

Reddit’s Litecoin Mining Subreddit is a great place to start! Also, check out WeUseCoins for more on Bitcoin.

Mining Altcoins for Fun and Profit was originally published in Edward Jiang on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In many ways, I think Facebook has hit a gold mine here. From my perspective as a page admin, we’ve captured a user base that’s passionate about our brand, and we’re willing to pay extra to reach people that we wouldn’t normally reach. These are:

• Fans that don’t actively comment, view, or “like” page content (so FB shows it to them less), but still want to be notified about important things that happen with StudentRND.
• Fans who visit Facebook at different times than when we post
• Friends of fans that share similar interests

Recent Criticism

Lately, there’s been a lot of criticism about Facebook’s sponsored posts — Mark Cuban created a media storm when he announced the Dallas Mavericks were going to focus more on Twitter and Tumblr. But it’s not just him. Facebook page admins are angry — they feel that Facebook’s holding the fans, which brands spent much effort acquiring, hostage for ~$3CPM.

Proponents of Facebook’s promoted posts argue that the only reason page admins are angry is that Facebook only started showing statistics for post reach recently — and users never understood that each post didn’t reach all of each page’s fans.

That’s kind of true. But at the same time, from our experience at StudentRND, we’ve experienced a dramatic drop in organic engagement shortly after Facebook announced the availability of this ad unit (shortly, meaning ~3 weeks or so?). It’s hard to really quantify, because different post types (images, text, links, etc) are prioritized in different ways, “likes” and other engagement will increase engagement, and because of our small sample size. But here’s some examples:

Before Drop:

• Viral news article
• Badly written text update

After Drop:

• News article
• Link share

Using Promoted Posts

Anyways, StudentRND and several of our volunteers decided to start using Facebook Promoted Posts — and we’ve had really mixed results. I’m not quite sure how if it’s just our experiences, or something more universal.

Here’s our first test with promoted posts. Promoting is pretty easy, there’s only two options:

• “People who like your page and their friends”, or “People who like your page”
• Spending amount (for us, the options are $5, $10, $15)

Here’s the result:

Wait, what? According to Facebook, 811/944 of our page’s likes are from users set to English (US)! And those names don’t look English (US) to me! At our next opportunity, we decided to try setting the option to “people who like your page”. Here’s the result:

This is weird. Most of these likes are from China, but we don’t have many Chinese fans on our Facebook page.

What’s going on here? We’re very puzzled — Facebook promoted posts are definitely exciting, but we can’t seem to use them effectively.

I don’t understand how to use Facebook’s Sponsored Posts was originally published in Edward Jiang on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.