The Financial Times’ 404 page | Hacker News Reader

The Financial Times’ 404 page

ft.com

609 pointsColinWright90 comments

The old bloomberg 404 from some years ago was pretty good: https://web.archive.org/web/20160311202451/http://www.bloomb...

Ironically, I’m getting an offline message from IA now.

https://twitter.com/aspenmayer/status/1452406960263942156

I do not understand what they meant - if they intended to mean anything - with the de-composing puppet. An in-joke?

My interpretation is: The artificial construct of a man striking the computer is/was running on the computer that was struck. So the artificial construct inadvertantly destroyed itself. Perhaps implying that violence is not a good solution. An odd bit of humor, but I liked it.

I understand it as a part of "crappy CGI" aesthetic.

SGI used to have a random selection of crying baby faces.

They used to have a bunch- this was always the best one.

Somewhere, some ops engineer is being pinged because the alerting system has noticed a huge increase in hits to the error page.

This huge increase in hits is accounted for by the “Behavioral economics” explanation: “The influence of psychological factors caused you to act in a manner that would not be expected of a purely rational actor.”

I was thinking the same thing, but that engineer should have a really short investigation as to why it's happening.

Access logs often include the HTTP Referer header, which would make it easy to see that all the traffic is coming from Hacker News.

Even so, if I were the one to submit the URL to Hacker News, I'd probably make the URL path something like /showing_404_page_to_Hacker_News so it's impossible for someone reading the access logs to wonder what's going on.

The engineer is already on HN and foresaw it before it happened.

Or the engineer is the one that posted it and already had the next 24hr window declared ahead of time to prevent the false positive.

> Demand increased and a shortage occurred.

The engineer then sat back and smiled at how their server continues to serve this page just fine despite the HN demand :)

The level of care and attention to detail isn't limited just to their 404's - I find the FT is the best paper out there for macro issues.

I think I recall Chomsky saying something along the lines that the financial press is the most reliable because it isn't in their economic interest to mislead their audience.

One of the most eye opening experiences I've had related to press was working in a hedge fund and being able to access paid political research reports.

No BS, no childish manipulation, just crude analysis of a bunch of people competing for power.

Do you remember what they were called?

I am interested in this as well. The regular media can be monotonous or driven by agendas. Would be great to find content created by folks paid to write unbiased, say it like it is.

Afaik that‘s what Stratfor does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor

They provide a free weekly newsletter as well.

Probably a Bloomberg terminal.

Bloomberg terminal bundles a lot of mid tier analysts, but all the market leading analyst firms sell their copy for FAR more than what Bloomberg will pay.

The analysis industry is fascinating, you're essentially paying gobsmacking amounts of money to a single journalist to follow 1 stock.

I think this is the relevant clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsESsHZNoO4

It isn’t? Isn’t it in their interest to mislead their audience such that their audience puts their vast wealth towards causes the FT editors like?

FT is one of the few papers online that I feel is worth paying for. I agree they are good on macro issues for sure.

Interesting. That specific page is blank but others redirect to a more useful 404

https://www.ft.com/thispagedoesnotexist

There seems to be a bug that sometimes it responds with an empty page (0 content length) with a 404 code, and sometimes it responds with a full 404 page.

I see. It seems that I was getting the empty page half an hour ago for just that link. Now it’s taking me to the full page.

Most likely there's a guru meditation error somewhere in the chain due to all HN regulars hitting that page...

The FT is well worth the cost. I read it cover to cover everyday, which is what I am doing now in the dark (PG&E). The weekend edition is always amazing, with great interviews (lunch with the FT). I still miss David Tang’s column (he died) as well as the humor of Mrs. Moneypenny. Janice Robinson wine column is worth the time if you are into wine.

First time seeing my name here. This is a strange personal motivation.

Was OP mistakenly implying you had passed away? Or do you just happen to share the same name as the FT author?

I guess OP was talking about someone else: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Tang#Other_roles

I just happen to share the name. Sorry for any confusion.

This is the kind of page tha the early internet thrived on. So quaint. Quirky.

(Now it is all just becoming a big, walled, advertising network ... sigh.)

Google's is a little quirky: https://google.com/foo

"Error 404 (Not Found)!!1"

Full disclosure I work at Google.

Other google domains serve different 404 pages on different URLs sometimes, for example:

- https://www.youtube.com/djhjwhfkffs

- https://www.youtube.com/varz

- https://www.youtube.com/abortabortabort

https://twitter.com/jeffdean/status/1282882643277656065 seems to explain it - "varz" is one of the "z pages" (a convention that by now has leaked outside Google), so it's handled by the Google web server infrastructure, not by the YouTube app. And "abortabortabort" and a few others are commands that are restricted at the load-balancer level.

Some of this style has leaked out in different places. For example Envoy (and Istio, if I recall correctly) implement the /quitquitquit handler.

> HTTP Error 4O4

> 404 Unfound

> The Web Server cannot give you the answers you need. Please check your life to ensure the path is correct. Did you press the right keys in sequence, and click with a firm but gentle hand? Are you paying attention? This may be a message, but it's not a mistake.

> Please contact the server's administrator if chaos persists.

> http://www.joseph.ca

Edited ...

As the child of this comment points out, I got this wrong. I was multi-tasking, and didn't read carefully enough.

If they delete their comment (which is now no longer relevant) then I'll delete this one and leave things tidy.

(they probably won't notice ...)

You need to pay attention. GP is quoting a different 404 page than the one linked by OP. :)

I love that kind of attention to detail. It's easy to treat the 404 page as something not needing any thought at all so it's refreshing to see some still care about such seemingly irrelevant details.

The Rolling Stones’ site had the best (and most obvious) 404 page ever — an embedded YouTube video for You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Sadly they’ve since removed it

I like that 404 page.

Also, the page you were actually looking for is probably https://on.ft.com/3lJQa6w

Here’s an archive version of that link too https://archive.ph/62boB

I appreciate that you might think that, and thank you, but I was only interested in the 404 page.

ML fails again. They need better traning data

now that is only weirder what is the meaning of "3lJQa6w" then ? surely you didn't randomly type that ?

This one was sent to me, but in a similar situation when someone said a 404 page from a particular site was fun, I simply mutated an existing genuine page until I had a URL that 404'd.

These are all good jokes. They've got some real comedic talent somewhere in those offices.

Surprised no one has mentioned dogs at Amazon yet

https://www.amazon.com/dp/skdkjdh

It is funny that you can see the bias in FT's politics in the descriptions they use.

For example, the trickle-down description genuinely reads as if written by a supporter of that economic theory in that it frames that theory in a positive economic light.

Meanwhile the socialism one is written by someone intending to mock socialism and isn't even accurate to socialism. It is more a descriptor of communism than socialism.

Yeah, that one didn't quite work -- I was trying to think of what a better one would be. I think the proper tone is parodying what someone who believes this might actually say, and they're fairly on the button for the rest of them. Something about the page's utility being made redundant through common ownership? (Economic jokes are hard.)

That caught my eye too. The others all looked reasonable (including Marxism) but the socialism one sounds like a caricature of an ignorant facebook post.

My read of the trickle-down one-liner was that it was taking the piss just as much as any of the others, FWIW.

I too inserted a themed-joke in my personal website with short stories: https://crooked.ink/notfound

I really do like funny 404 pages, they add something unique to the browsing experience.

I remember a 404 page with the following (I don't think it was unique to that website):

> Once upon a midnight dreary, While I websurfed, weak and weary, Over many a strange and spurious website of hot chicks galore,

>While I clicked my fav'rite bookmark, Suddenly there came a warning, And my heart was filled with mourning, Mourning for my dear amour.

>'Tis not possible!, I pleaded, But my browser, so conceited, Remained blank, I then repeated, Just a blank and nothing more.

>With a scream, I was defeated, For my cookies were deleted, So i begged, no longer seated, "Give me back my free hardcore!"

>Then, in answer to my query, Through the net I loved so dearly, Came its answer, dark and dreary: Quoth the server, 404

Half expecting "It's dark here. You're about to be eaten by a grue."

That's a lovely site, the design really gives me e-book vibes.

Thank you! That was my intention :)

"The best outcome was unachievable, so you arrived here instead"

Story of a surprising proportion of human existence.

"While you probably do have what it takes to be a doctor, which would have been an optimal outcome for many sick people (and a sub-optimal outcome for protectionist, labor-supply limiting organizations), at some point in life you were not permitted to continue attempting to become a doctor. This could have happened because you failed biochem, failed the MCAT, or ran out of money along the way. And now, by path of least resistence, you are selling medical devices."

It appears to be suffering the HN "Hug of Death".

Here's the version from the wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211024193418/https://www.ft.co...

Tragedy of the commons strikes again.

To pick on a comment probably not meant as serious economics: It is most emphatically not a tragedy of the commons. We don't commonly own FT.com or share in its use. It is privately owned and thus a tragedy for FT's owners, if it significantly impacts their profits. Probably not.

They know. They're referring to the page this thread is about, which lists Tragedy of the Commons as a reason for a 404 with this explanation:

> Everyone wanted to view this page, but no-one was willing to maintain it.

The Wayback Machine seems to be suffering, as well:

Temporarily Offline

Internet Archive services are temporarily offline.

Please check our Twitter feed for the latest information.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Love it!

Here's mine (the site is very old -from last century): https://cmarshall.net/Error_404.html

Inspired by Douglas Adams (From HGTTG).

It's a good page, but also gets posted quite often here

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

While it has been posted many times this is the only one with a critical mass of comments.

Is a few times in the last 6 years really that often?

Maybe not. Perhaps I'm just on here too much.

I love it. So much.

Does anyone else get a ~10vh white bar at the bottom when they begin scrolling?

No. Possibly your ad blocker is trying to get rid of the Nikkei footer and only doing half the job?

Basically a version of the two cows joke - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_have_two_cows

> Socialism If you were to get the page you wanted you might get a better page than someone else, which would be unfair. This way at least everyone gets the same.

I chuckled. FT is going to get angry tweets about their 404 page.

TIL UX designers are behavioural economists

I wonder if this 404 page is still being considered by search engines for SEO purposes

If it returns a 404 status code then search engines will generally effectively ignore it

Freakonomics: there is a surprising and commonly undervalued secondary market for 404 pages, and you just realized you purchased a bootleg, which is nevertheless priceless: https://archive.md/MzOrc

In fact Google even attempts to detect "soft 404s" and will not index those either. That's when it thinks the content wasn't found but the server still returned a 200 response. This can happen in any application but I think they developed it with SPAs in mind

Only one of these explanations is pluasible.

Siemens has a pong game on there 404 page.

https://new.siemens.com/de/dhhji

I like this one! Rather fun to play also.

Yes, not so easy and the sound, just great :-)

Their fonts are great!

Not sure about this one

Quote:

Laissez Faire Capitalism: We know this page is needed, but we can't force anyone to make it.

Shouldn’t it be that there’s no profit in making one

I like it better because it’s true

at least it loads fast

love it!XD loads fast also.

I don’t like 404 pages. We shouldn’t be giving an HTTP Status Code to an unsophisticated end-user.

Better to just redirect to the index, and give a welcome message explaining what happened.

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