Links for 01-16-2014

• Inferior Goods, Giffen Goods, and Shochu
• The Current State Of MOOCs - Edudemic | Infographics
• 10 Things I’ve Learned (So Far) from Making a Meta-MOOC
• The Scale of the Universe 2
• Cloud standards set to mature in next 18 months
• Netflix Is Caught Between a DVD and a Hard Place - Bloomberg - "There’s no great loss without some small gain; I’ve kind of enjoyed rediscovering some of the better 1980s miniseries. (Think “The Winds of War,” not “North and South.”) But the other night, my husband and I were remarking that we may have to go back to using the DVD-by-mail service for movies. And I wonder if we aren’t going to be stuck with that model: streaming for idle watching, but if you want something specific, you’ll need to order and wait. In other words, I wonder if the golden era of streaming is not ahead, but already behind us."
• Adaptive IT — Empathy: The Essence of DevOps - "Dev and Ops need to empathize with each other (and with Design and Marketing) because they’re cooperating agents within a larger software-as-service system. More importantly, they all need to empathize, not just with each other, but also with users."
• Falkenblog: Taleb Mishandles Fragility - "Christmas traditions have gone from stockings and exchanging gifts, to fruitcakes, bad sweaters, NBA games, and now Taleb books, a sign that perhaps the Mayan return isn't so much an apocalypse but rather a mercy killing. Taleb is one of many best-selling authors I don't enjoy (Tom Friedman, Robert Kiyosaki, Snooki), but as he is prolix, pretentious, petulant and clueless, I enjoy commenting on his latest blather (my review of Black Swan here, Bed of Procrustes here)."