Japan's Women Opt Out of Marriage - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/world/asia/japan-single-women-marriage.html <comment><USER2> You can view this as the result of the emancipation of women.

Or you can view it as the sacrifice of the private sphere (family, children, home and hearth) at the altar of the economic sphere.

I suppose I view it as a bit of both. I certainly don't like the idea of people being forced into marriage. But I'm also skeptical of the rejection of marriage. I don't think a career can replace a family. The reason I have a career is so I can have a family.

A lot of people in their 20s seem to think that their dayjob is actively involved with "making the world a better place" and will lead to fulfillment. I think "brainwashing" is a fairly accurate word to describe that mentality.

<comment><USER3> If having children is so wonderful one must wonder why men still haven't by large decided to pitch in when it comes to the nuts and bolts of child rearing. While I would agree that any vocational claim of making the world a better place is dubious, certainly that is equally true if not more so of bringing more people into the world.

<comment><USER4> > If having children is so wonderful one must wonder why men still haven't by > large decided to pitch in when it comes to the nuts and bolts of child > rearing.

It's, by and large, because those are not the men that women select to have children with. When women consistently choose the man with the six figure salary, but that implies working long hours, what follows is predictable.

There is also a high degree of adverse selection there because a woman can't tell how much a man will help with the children before she has the children, by which point the father is already chosen. So they choose based on what they do know (e.g. salary) which is _inversely_ correlated with that.

<comment><USER5> Bingo. I was on the kind of career trajectory for a million dollar salary. The most famous school, name brand employers, etc. But when we had a kid I fell in love and I wanted to spend tons of time with him. It's my wife who had to be OK with moving out of the Bay Area, cutting our expenses, while I transitioned to a job where I basically work 5 hours a day and make less than $200K. Most wives would have said no fucking way. We are going to have more kids and I may even go full stay at home dad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not just women, but men also opt out of marriage. Because we have no reason for marriage anymore. The writer, as usual, don't mention the elephant in the room. It must be intentional because she probably want to write about women's right and nothing else.

The reason is nothing but for the lack of money. We, the average Japanese, cannot afford to have a child anymore. We just barely afford to have a life for themselves.

Why did we have to have a marriage? Because of the children. Because in the Japanese society, the children is assumed that they have a parent consists of one male and one female in marriage relationship.

Since we cannot afford to have a child, there is no reason to marriage anymore.

What other functions the marriage offer?

Asset management and inheritance? No. We can't afford to have a reserve or real estate. There is no use for that.

Bonding the families? No, as rural areas are more and more abandoned and everybody concentrate toward a few big cities, there is no traditional bonding of the families in one area.

Sex? Well, Not anymore. Japanese marriage system assume that the marriage is a exclusive sex relationship between single male and single female. It support very narrow traditional sexuality and excluding today's most of the sexuality.

The marriage system is now outdated. Ironically, the traditional marriage system is one of the cause of birth decline. It's an obstacle. Some people still want to have a child driven by natural instinct, but the current Japanese society assume a marriage between a male and a female who share their asset as the one, agree exclusive sexual relationship. Not following that pattern and you have huge negative impact on tax, school, health insurance and everything which makes those who want to have a child but don't agree on traditional marriage system holding to have a baby.

Conclusion: The marriage is outdated.

<comment><USER7> It will be never outdated, it is a must for healthy mental grow of children (as you also weakly pointed out). To get love, to be able to focus and deliver, get direction, learn and bring forward traditions, learn social skills, create bond etc.

Of course orphanage also works, but hard to imagine it is the ideal structure, thou it worked for Turkish janissary (there are probably plenty of other examples from history) and now China also trying it with minorities.

Children are not as expensive as one imagine, you might have to give up the most expensive phone/car luxury etc. But just ask any elderly if it worth it. If your mind thinking more like assets, children has the biggest appreciation value over anything.

<comment><USER8> I know several unmarried, non-conventional and blended families who seem to disprove the theory that marriage is a necessary condition for a child's healthy upbringing.

And it is clearly false that marriage is a sufficient condition.

<comment><USER9> There are outliers, usually composed of individuals who are also outliers in terms of ability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> These are other articles by the NYT:

* Japan's Working Mothers: Record Responsibilities, Little Help From Dads

* In Japan, More Women Fight to Use Their Own Surnames

* Japan Desperately Needs More Day Care Workers. New Mothers Need Not Apply.

* A Princess in a Cage

Seems like NYT has a mission to liberate woman in Japan...

I am really skeptical of this ideology that affirms work and a wage as some sort of spiritual liberation.

<comment><USER11> If you earn your own money then you have more independence. If that's ideological then I don't know what's not ideological.

<comment><USER10> I am employed and I earn my own money, but I am not truly "independent".

<comment><USER11> Well yes, we are all as such under capitalism. But it's a matter of degree.

<comment><USER10> What I want to discuss is the underlying premise of these articles, that by woman being liberated from the burden of the family, they achieve a sort of independence that leads them to increased happiness. And furthermore, that this trend is nothing but the next step in societal evolution and previous models of organization are not only outdated, but a form of subjugation.

<comment><USER8> It is a bit odd. I suppose by this light, men's increased participation in home life and parenting represents a forgoing of their independence and an reduction in their happiness. This does not seem to be the case e.g. in Scandinavia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of consensus.

For every economically free woman there seem to be 5 more that would prefer the man to pay for every date or assume other traditional roles, no matter how it is rationalized. (My experiences in the Americas and most European cultures.) In this article about Japan that seems like an accurate distribution, given that it mentions only 1 out of 7 subscribe to any of the logic/circumstances the article is written about.

To be a male ally for the economically free and liberated woman is almost the worst form of altruism.

The incentives are completely misaligned. All you can do is learn about what the sensibilities are, never publicly disagree with them on record or around a woman striving for these ideals, but do the complete opposite with the much larger population of women that expects a certain traditional heteronormative gender role.

(The goal, of course, is to be an eligible mate - or not ineligible - for all of them)

<comment><USER13> >The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of consensus.

>For every economically free woman there seem to be 5 more that would prefer the man to pay for every date or assume other traditional roles, no matter how it is rationalized.

Women, like men, are individuals possessed of a diverse set of opinions and beliefs, they do not operate according to a consensus algorithm. To expect "consensus" among an entire gender on a topic like feminist identity and inter (and intra) gender relationship dynamics, particularly at the level of social and cultural expectations, is sexist and diminishing.

>The goal, of course, is to be an eligible mate - or not ineligible - for all of them

No, the goal is, or should be, to support human rights, because that is what womens' rights are. Men should be allies of women and of feminism because the belief that women have the right to bodily, social, political and career autonomy is the morally correct position to hold, not as a pretext to maximizing their chances of getting laid.

<comment><USER12> I agree with you

Many people deciding what feminism is are speaking on behalf of their whole gender and leave no oxygen for others to point out the lack of consensus on these matters. Its the same filter bubble seen on other polarizing topics, your echo chamber agrees with you and everyone that disagrees is an irreconcilable deplorable.

I agree people should be treated as individuals

Lack of consensus accurately describes my frustration

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They didn't even attempt to talk to a single married woman in Japan who likes her life.

<comment><USER15> That wouldn't have fit the tone and bias of the article... there's a good reason why I rarely read the NYT anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _As recently as the mid-1990s, only one in 20 women in Japan had never been > married by the time they turned 50, according to government census figures. > But by 2015, the most recent year for which statistics are available, that > had changed drastically, with one in seven women remaining unmarried by that > age_

If anyone is curious, the statistics for the U.S. look similar. [https://i.redd.it/qn25qiv8fawz.png](https://i.redd.it/qn25qiv8fawz.png)

<comment><USER17> With the difference quite likely being that Japanese children are rarely born out of wedlock as the article suggests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can confirm. Wife tells me all the time about how shitty Japanese guys are as husbands (heard all of her friends complain), and how happy she is that I'm not Japanese.

Even stay at home mothers without jobs do an insane amount of work here, with husbands expecting home made meals. This is all anecdotal of course, but I hear Japanese husbands almost never participate in any household chores. Wives don't even bother asking as they are afraid of being seen as incompetent at doing housework. I can only imagine the schedules for working women! Mind you, Japan is not a society where hiring others to watch your kids is a common thing. Women typically do most of the kid raising on their own, with husbands only around on weekends and holidays.

<comment><USER19> Your wife married a foreigner, and you are touting her bias as some overarching trend? Japanese men bad; foreigner good. Come on...

I respect that you admit it's anecdotal, but this goes well into data gleaned from self selection bias.

<comment><USER18> My wife didn't marry me because Japanese guys are shitty, she was far too young to know better when we met. This is coming from a person who interacts with married women living in Japan. Her personal opinion of Japanese guys was not formed until after interactions with these women. Even then, you could argue she is biased just by the company she keeps. I'm just telling you what I hear from my sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article read really biased. The part about wife being ruled by her husband is simply not true. In Japanese households traditionally wife stays at home to be a housewife and man earns the money. But when he brings the money home, he gives all of them to wife who traditionally controls household's money and only gives a husband a small pocket money which he is then allowed to spend how he wants.

So obviously the article's allusions to Japanese sexism must be taken with reservation.

<comment><USER21> Gender-based division of labor is heavily frowned upon in modern society, even if that division of labor still makes a lot of sense for a lot of people.

<comment><USER22> Eh, "heavily frowned upon" in certain small (but incredibly vocal) urban pockets along the US coastline, sure. The rest of the nation... not so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I guess the key question is whether new cultural norms can be formed that allow both women and men to have the opportunities they deserve while still encouraging and supporting the birth of children. Liberation doesn't do much good if the culture and way of life that liberated them dies off.

<comment><USER24> I'm seeing this framing a lot in this thread and I haven't experienced it before, where does this "back in the day when women had less freedom it was better for humanity" come from? Seems like a negative feedback loop if you're looking for a date...

<comment><USER23> I said nothing of the sort. Since I went to great trouble to avoid any hint of that in my post, I suggest you re-read my post and apologize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not just Japan, but also a lot of the western world. People are getting married less often and having fewer children and my guess is that it's largely driven by women opting out as they are a lot more selective in who they date and marry compared to men. Historically women didn't have much of a say in the matter since they needed to marry for a better life since they lacked the freedoms or resources to go it alone. Now that women have gained their freedom and the resources to to survive on their own (higher rates of education, economy that supports high paying jobs that employees lots of women, etc), they can totally stay unmarried and have fulfilling lives in their social circles and wait until they can select exactly what they want. Men largely take what they can get, they are the selected. Women select. And of course this is just a generalization.

<comment><USER26> How do you ensure our society survives in such an environment? There's a potential future where the birth rate in open and tolerant communities falls to near zero while the birth rate in closed, ultra orthodox (across numerous faiths and denominations) religious communities within which women are commanded to procreate remains high. If you watch a show like Handmaid's Tale through this lens you can start to connect the hypothetical dots from here to there.

<comment><USER27> I think the solution is probably to make having children more attractive with government subsidies and labor laws. E.g. free daycare, affordable education (including college), health care, a minimum amount of paid time off per year, etc.

Nobody should be forced to get married or have children if they don't want to. But if we can alleviate some of the risks/down sides to having children, I think we will see more people choosing to start families and also having more children per family.

<comment><USER28> > to make having children more attractive with government subsidies and labor > laws

This is a bad idea. Russian government have already tried that, and the result was that less wealthy people (mostly alcoholic and drug addicts) started to literally make children to receive subsidies and spend them on themselves.

It's fun to me how Google search results differ for "to make a child for subsidies" and for this same phrase translated to Russian, where it has already became a phenomenon.

<comment><USER29> Subsidies can be tied up to mortgage: the entire cost of housing can be made deductible from taxes, all expenses related to kids can be reimbursed (by IRS in April: you show checks and they give you money back). On top of that your income can be backed by the government for an extended period of time in case something happens to you, while you still need to pay for everything. You may ask where do we get money for all this? Tax on wealth. Many countries tax investments at 1% a year, not income, but investments. This won't bankrupt the rich people because investments usually make 5-10% per year and the government can take a small fraction of that. And no, the rich won't move their money abroad because safety that the US gives is worth a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel like every generation has this in some capacity, and the movement just dies off due to lack of reproduction. Leaving just their artifacts from their writings to inspire a similar distribution of people in a future generation, who also fail to create offspring to instill similar ideals in. Whereas the counterparts are reproducing in heteronormative relationships.

Is there enough data to study this now, just to confirm (or accept completely different findings)

</comment><comment><USER30> I feel sad reading this article but understand where the women seem to be coming from. It basically seems like two choices 1) get married and because your husband works all day, you get zero assistance managing kids and housework and aging relatives. There's no safety net there, unlike in the US where, in many cases the husband could take time off or work from home to help out when the wife needs 2) don't get married and be encumbered to all that. But have to forgo intimacy and the joys of kids.

<comment><USER31> Note that given expected hours from salaried man in Japan, men don't get to experience joys of kids at all, no matter whether they marry or not.

<comment><USER15> Yeah the salary men culture of Japan is not one of moderation. I mean they even have a specific term for being overworked to death: "karoshi".

...but I wouldn't hold my breath on the NYT writing an article on how rough Japanese men have it.

<comment><USER32> they sure have. in 1980 even. [https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/19/world/tokyo- tries-to-find...](https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/19/world/tokyo-tries-to- find-out-if-salarymen-are-working-themselves-to-death.html)

That was just the first link, I'm sure there are more, but i'm not going to do your homework for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can any anthropologists answer this: have there been other human cultures that die out due to a lack of desire to procreate, or is this a new development?

<comment><USER33> Has Japanese culture died out already? A trend does not equal actually dying out.

<comment><USER34> Well they are on track to have 50% of their population disappear in the next 40 years and a lot of economic upsets because of it. The fact they are isolated does protect against that, but presents other complications.

<comment><USER33> That's what I meant by "trend". 40 years is a long time and recently, fertility rates have frequently changed on shorter timescales.

<comment><USER35> Indeed, fertility rates can change rapidly. However it's foolish to simply claim it can change so it will. If the current trend continues the Japanese people and culture will be lost to time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is the problem here that Japanese men so stubbornly hold onto traditional morays? I've never been and am only passively familiar with cultural tradition, but it seems like the "company man" tradition is still very much alive, along with a lot of other very dated concepts.

<comment><USER27> There's really quite a bit of bias here in this short statement that I'd like to highlight:

* Assumes that falling marriage/birth rate is a bad thing. But there are some benefits as well such as fewer unwanted births and unhappy marriages, less environmental strain, affordable housing costs, low unemployment, etc.

* Assumes that only men "stubbornly hold onto traditional mores". Surely women do this too.

* Assumes cultural differences in Japan are "dated" (and therefore inferior) compared to elsewhere.

Note that I'm not even a cultural relativist. I do think that some cultural traits are objectively better than others. But you do need to be careful to avoid bias.

Finally I'd just point out that marriage and birth rates are on the decline in much of the developed world. Which leads me to believe that the cause must more universal than a single population of men refusing to abandon their stubborn traditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I don't think Japanese women have a say in the society, you see very few women rising up, the gender roles are strictly enforced. Had a female friend who was fairly ambitious, she left and moved to the US, since she said there was no way she could pursue those there

<comment><USER38> I know a Japanese women who went to college in the states and had the opposite opinion so she moved back to Tokyo. I guess our experiences cancel one another out!

<comment><USER39> Both of your experiences are valid for each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> can you check out this, do you satisfy the theory and reasoning they have given. [https://geniesmag.com/being-single-women-new-freedom- trend-j...](https://geniesmag.com/being-single-women-new-freedom-trend-japan/)

</comment><comment><USER41> I think it is good for other species, if more and more women won't find suitable partners to procreate.

Right now, only the poor and the wealthy are procreating.

</comment><comment><USER38> Few houses have electric driers. Japan's energy consumption rate is also lower than America's. The good and the bad.</comment>


Massively improve JS animation smoothness in Safari with one line of CSS - <AUTHOR>

I thought I'd share this as it might be useful. Including the following CSS can massively improve the smoothness of JS animations in Safari desktop and mobile. It also solves weird flickering issues on iPad/iPhone Safari. Don't know why it works but it does and the improvements, at least for my web app, were spectacular.<p>html * { -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden; } <comment><USER2> When applied as suggested, this will cause smaller type (~10-12px) to appear very blurry. Also, when using an iOS device, it will make all text unreadably blurry upon zooming in.

I suggest applying this property only to the element you'd like to improve the animation of.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I don't think you need the *:

html { -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden; } should do

</comment><comment><USER3> simple as googling <http://css-infos.net/property/-webkit-backface-visibility>

</comment><comment><USER4> What does it do? Im curious to know :)

<comment><USER5> Short version: Backface culling. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back- face_culling></comment></comment>


Tit Stare – We wish to apologise - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/titstare/posts/566491406741701

<comment><USER2> So they admit that they were childish?

What a stupid setback for "risque" apps and sites.

The Adult industry is just as legitimate as any industry, from the point of view of a business.

The best thing they could have done is gone gender neutral in order to avoid all the sexist nonsense.

<comment><USER3> _The Adult industry is just as legitimate as any industry, from the point of view of a business._

What business was Titstare running again?

There is a world of difference between a legitimate adult service that uses consenting adults and an app allowing you to take sexually offensive photos of strangers.

In any case, just because the adult industry is a legitimate business does not mean it is appropriate for all contexts and all ages, does it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's sad that someone would actually have the nerve to present such an idea. Coming forth and apologizing is a step, but they have to do much more than that to repair their image. I just hope this incident doesn't come back to haunt them in the future (which I fear it might) when they are pitching legitimate ideas to potential investors/co-founders/etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Unfortunately, our initial idea did not evolve in time, so we felt our last > minute mock-up was our only option to present, and there was never any > intention to bring this idea to fruition.

This was a mock-up for something that wasn't sexist and terrible?

Bologna, brought to you by Brogrammers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone have link/info on what this is about? I haven't been following what happened with TechCrunch so I've got no idea what idiotic thing whoever this is has done now to earn our ire.

<comment><USER3> The reason you don't know is that the HN community flags any post about it. This one was on the front page for.. five minutes before it was removed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In these situations I feel it's best to just say "sorry, we fucked up" and don't try to spin it as a misinterpretation (referring to the whole comedic bit). Unfortunately, I don't think you win anything by trying to reason your way out of situations like this.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can't wait for the similar apology from lulu</comment>


Parrots have evolved a primate-like telencephalic-midbrain-cerebellar circuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28301-4 <comment><USER2> Parrots and some other birds (like corvids) are ludicrously intelligent for their size and brain size. They can solve puzzles, use tools, copy speech and do all sorts of things that we usually associate with big-brained higher mammals.

This looks like we're finally getting some sense of how birds' intelligence works from a neuroevolutionary sense.

<comment><USER3> They independently evolved a structure similar to the mammalian neocortex called the avian nidopallium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Our ancestors had large brains and made tools and fire long before language or representational art. Some structural change enabled that. Probably, there were individual components of it that arose before the whole change happened, and then some further time for it to spread through the population and then leave artefacts.

The spread may have been dramatic, because to an individual who could think, everyone else might seem like zombies or animals, easily manipulated or outwitted. How some "woke" Holdenesque teenagers feel themselves to be.

My point is that, maybe such a large brain isn't really necessary for intelligence. Just the structural change. Although, since we're the only ones, _sufficient_ processing power seems a necessary precondition. It's just not clear how much. Perhaps parrots are quite close.

There's the encephalization quotient, which finds the ratio between brain and body size is what's important. e.g. Whales have enormous brains, but dolphins seem to be more intelligent. Parrots, needing to be light enough to fly, have a high EQ. (Spiders too)

Aside: it's thought that human brain size is limited by the birth canal, and we are born prematurely, with swaddling and cots etc being artificial wombs. Bird nests are also artificial wombs.

<comment><USER5> The interesting thing I learned about birds is that they have more efficient brains, pound for pound, than mammals. It's not just about brain-size-to- total-mass ratio, it's also an absolute how-much-processing-power-does-this- brain-mass-get-me ratio. This almost assuredly would have been driven by the constraints demanded by the need for flight. Crows can use tools just like primates, with far, far smaller absolute brain weights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a parrot that learned to call the dog over to the cage, throw food at him and then would laugh. Sometimes in a British accent, I am not sure where that came from...

<comment><USER7> Dare I say, perhaps from watching John Oliver :)

<comment><USER6> Unlikely, he is 36 years old and has been doing that for as long as as I can remember.

<comment><USER8> The parrot is 36 years old? That's very special. I know some birds can outlive humans (a web search will bring up some cases), but we generally think of pets as having shorter lifetimes than us.

He's relatively a sage and I hope he is treated with the respect one deserves. :)

<comment><USER6> It actually turns out the bird is a female, but thirty years of saying "he" is a hard habit to break. I was told from a pet store owner you could do a DNA analysis of the poop to determine gender. Also he incorrectly told me male birds could lay eggs if they didn't have a mate. I was 8 so I believed it.

<comment><USER8> > _Also he incorrectly told me male birds could lay eggs if they didn 't have > a mate._

This is hilarious. You should get her a mate. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the evolutionary benefit of our large brains, when birds can achieve such high intelligence in such a small volume? I mean, having a smaller head would definitely be a tangible benefit for survival (e.g. easier birth, less prone to injury, needs less energy) , yet humans had evolved in the exact opposite direction... What is the avian brain's secret sauce?

<comment><USER10> You can write on hackernews, avians can't. I guess the answer is pretty straightforward.

<comment><USER11> What happens though if you give a avian or a tribe of sign language fluent apes.. a way to write things down permanently..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> More evidence that differences in intelligence are largely differences in basic brain _structure_ , not things that significantly vary within species. IMO brains are structures that can be easily broken by mutations, but if unbroken are of roughly equal potential (although a product of surface area and density of connections might make a measurable difference in memory.) Better brains would be significantly different in structure.

Give a brain the right structure, and it could be the size of a peanut and figure out things you can't figure out.

<comment><USER13> This is certainly evidence for the obvious point that structure matters.

But it is not evidence that size does not matter. There is a reason why the human cortex is 4X the size of a chimp's. Human IQ is correlated with brain size.

Density of connections also seems to matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cockatiels also have an uncanny intelligence - they recognize different people, behave and play differently with each one of them, I always wonder how idle my surplus of 1298g of brain is...

<comment><USER15> Looking at my mother's descent from Alzheimer's, what we have is (if you will excuse the analogy) more skill slots, not unique class skills.

<comment><USER16> Could you please expand on what you mean?

<comment><USER17> I suppose they're referencing a popular video game mechanic, in which skill- building works by collecting skills in a limited number of "slots".

The claim is that while humans may be able to master a large number of different skills, few of them are limited to humans in and of themselves (and not available to some other animals as well).

<comment><USER16> That clarifies things. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PowerRanger.js - <AUTHOR> http://dxdstudio.com/labs/powerRanger/

<comment><USER2> Picking a name that conflicts with a major trade mark seems like a bad idea.</comment>


Ship Small Diffs - <AUTHOR> https://blog.skyliner.io/ship-small-diffs-741308bec0d1 <comment><USER2> Sometimes culture prevents/subverts this. For example, if your reviewers won't approve diffs where the new code is not yet actually connected to anything, you won't be able to parcel a feature into small diffs and then turn it on at the end. That is only one example.

Also, while it's true that reviewers will "lgtm" a large diff without close examination, reviewers also allow themselves to get hung up on mind-bogglingly dull details in a small diff. There is little else to focus on in a small diff, and people seem to feel insecure about "rubber-stamping" PRs. There apparently needs to be some contribution from them, or else do they really exist? I usually just change whatever silly thing they want changed, so we can all get on with our lives. And because I strongly believe we shouldn't get too attached to our own code or ideas anyway.</comment>


Do we need paid upgrades in the Mac App Store? - <AUTHOR> http://www.mentalfaculty.com/mentalfaculty/Blog/Entries/2012/3/28_Paid_Upgrades_and_the_Mac_App_Store.html

<comment><USER2> I run an alternative to the App Store (Cydia) that happens to support paid upgrades. As far as I can tell, they are an important mechanism that allows developers to obtain a hardcore audience and then support them into the long- haul.

This article seems to believe that you can continue to expand your market forever, as there "are always more fish in the sea", but in fact some (many) products really do have limited appeal: you need to not lose the people you have.

And honestly, that's actually what "free upgrades" means: it is the developer telling the people who already like his products that they are no longer considered his customer; that he is no longer attempting to make the product better for them.

Instead, he has chosen to target the incremental increase in users that he can obtain by using the existing users only as a marketing channel, and then gearing the product towards continuing to sell new people who don't have your product yet.

While this might work for some products, you /are/ going to get diminishing returns: the sales graphs for products like this are always exactly the same, with a long and reasonably flat but definitely and certainly declining tail.</comment>


Ask HN: Securely run code uploaded by users - <AUTHOR> Hi,
Just wondering if anyone has expertise on how to securely run code uploaded or typed in by users. I am curious about how those online coding environments are able to work securely without the worry of the server environment being attacked.
A thought I had was using Docker as a means to run the code.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> See blog post on golang playground:

[https://blog.golang.org/playground](https://blog.golang.org/playground)

NodeJS also includes a sandbox in its standard lib. And there are more advanced versions out there:

[https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2](https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2)

Good luck and be careful ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - is there an equivalent for Python and R?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was once thinking of implementing such an online judge. Looking through the existing implementations, most restrict the syscalls available to the untrusted process, and run in a chroot.

On freebsd, you'd use something like capsicum. On linux, something like seccomp. Although, nowadays I imagine people would think of just running in a VM or a container.

<comment><USER4> Docker has apparmor and secco o profiles. Apart from the default, you can monitor for syscalls and build a custom, pet app profile. Couple that with proper mount perms, drop root user, monitor for outgoing connections and write proper firewall rules (cillium can be used to write bpf rules) and you are pretty secure. You need time, attention to detail and multiple iterations to distill the profiles for each layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a pretty in depth blog on how I run Node.js code for my SaaS at [https://medium.freecodecamp.org/running-untrusted- javascript...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/running-untrusted-javascript- as-a-saas-is-hard-this-is-how-i-tamed-the-demons-973870f76e1c)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is close to perfect from what I had originally envisioned with a Docker container. Thank you! If you don't mind, may I ask some questions if I do get stuck? It's my first time working with Docker.

<comment><USER5> No problem, ask away. My email is email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not an expert by any means but two things that come to mind are:

1\. Run your users code outside of your secured network. If you have a network with a VPC, make sure you're not running users code within your VPC.

2\. Restrict network access. If the code doesn't need to talk with the outside world, don't allow egress traffic.

</comment><comment><USER7> It helps to define the types of possible attacks, there are thee generally;

1\. Accessing and exploiting system resources like file system, network stack etc. Generally this can be mitigated by providing a method to whitelist api calls. Jvm security manager has this capability.

2\. Exhaust memory by abusing heap allocation. Some os have the capability to limit memory usage per process. Some language run times can like jvm maxheap flag. Note this is per process, not per user request/script.

3\. Hog the cpu, starving other process/requests/scripts. Again there are os level abilities to limit cpu per process, again not for individual request/script.

I don't know of any language/runtime that covers these three areas, if you do, or if I missed anything, please share!

<comment><USER2> Possibly requiring state-actor level of expertise, but I'd be paranoid about escaping the container / vm and gaining elevated privileges ;)

Sandbox will in all probability be running alongside application code so the risk is an attacker gaining complete covert control!</comment></comment>


Why the Motorola Android is a sure-fire hit - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/reviews/4335459.html?nav=RSS20&src=syn&dom=yah_buzz&mag=pop

<comment><USER2> No such thing as a sure-fire hit, especially in the mobile world. Verizon's Droid looks like the best Android phone to date, but that won't make it a hit in-and-of itself.

The Droid's best feature, over the iPhone, may end up being it's ability to actually make and receive phone calls.

</comment><comment><USER3> Summary: The phone will be a hit because all the other phones on the Verizon network suck, and because Verizon doesn't offer the iPhone.</comment>


As MacBook Air ages, Apple rivals show the way to Retina - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57606096-37/as-macbook-air-ages-apple-rivals-show-the-way-to-retina/ <comment><USER2> Pff, I bet you the three laptops mentioned in this article can't hold a candle to the Air's 12 hour battery life. Given that Apple has been shipping both larger and smaller retina displays for a while now, I'm sure they could add one to the MBA if they felt so inclined, and must have a good reason to not do it. Like, say, battery life.

Let's see:

HP Spectre 13 - "up to 9 hours of battery life" \- [http://www8.hp.com/us/en/ads/new- products/spectre-13-ultrabo...](http://www8.hp.com/us/en/ads/new- products/spectre-13-ultrabook.html) (and then the small text: "Battery life will vary depending on numerous factors including product model, configuration, loaded applications, features, use, wireless functionality, and power management settings" \-- so basically, you'd have to have a stock configuration of Windows and not touch it to see nine hours. Useful.)

Dell XPS 11 - ??? - The laptop hasn't shipped yet, it seems, and no one's saying how the battery is.

Sony Vaio Pro 11 - "battery life in excess of 6 hours" [http://www.cnet.com/laptops/sony-vaio- pro-11/4505-3121_7-357...](http://www.cnet.com/laptops/sony-vaio- pro-11/4505-3121_7-35781039-1.html)

<comment><USER3> Yes, because only Apple has access to Haswell processors.

"Battery life will vary depending on numerous factors including product model, configuration, loaded applications, features, use, wireless functionality, and power management settings"

Apparently the MBA doesn't require battery to run its Wifi, either...

<comment><USER4> The 1.3Ghz 13" crushes other portables in 3rd party battery tests, getting 12:51 on engadgets movie test ([http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/13/macbook- air-review/](http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/13/macbook-air-review/)). While being light and easy to tote.

It is more than just the processor, this is one place where Apple's sourcing and close hardware/software bonding really shows value.

For me, it was a bit of a game changer, because I can charge it at home like a cell phone rather than dragging around the power supply and cables in my bag like I used to.

Excluding special "sheet batteries" and other basically external batteries, there are only a handful of laptops that are in the ballpark, and they are all significantly more bulky.

Lenovo 9-Cell T430 and X230 beat it out battery wise (slightly), and the Dell E6430 and HP 2570p come close. Out of those, the only one near it weight wise and size is the X230 -- and with the 9 cell battery it is still over half a pound heavier (3.5 versus 2.9). Also, the X230 as configured to beat Apple is slower and $650 more.

<comment><USER5> And of course with the impending release of OS X Mavericks - which is highly focused on optimizing power consumption - we will get even more battery life out of our MacBooks. Based on preliminary beta reports the 2013 13" MBA will get closer to 14 hours in real world usage.

<comment><USER6> My retina MacBook gets 2 additional hours of real world usage on Mavericks. Amazing update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I own the current MacBook Air and I don't care about retina. Yes, it would be nice, but I prefer the extra battery life. It's the best computer I've ever used.

<comment><USER8> I own a retina and the battery life is simply horrendous.

<comment><USER9> I spent 4 hours on a plane on Friday using my 15" MBPr the entire allowable time (4 ticks of screen brightness)and still had 50% of my battery left. Hardly what I'd call horrendous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> off topic, but I have been looking to get a new laptop and could use some opinions. My past laptop purchases have been pretty much a failure as I always opted for large 'desktop replacement' style laptops which in the end basically defeat the purpose of having a laptop in the first place.

This time, I want to make sure my laptop is portable and lasts a while on battery. I know tons of developers love the MBP but I am having a hard time reconciling the 1000ish dollar difference between equivalent windows based machines, along with the fact that I am not a big fan of apple and will be putting Linux on whatever machine I get regardless.

I guess my real question is, is there anyone out there who has tried both sides of the spectrum and can speak to whether any 'ultrabooks' can compare to the MBP in terms of screen quality, portability, and power. Or should I just bite the bullet and go for a MBP. My main use cases are standard development stuff. Relatively resource hungry Jet brains IDE, virtualization, etc.

Any opinions are appreciated.

<comment><USER11> I have a new MBA and it's superb, I'm really satisfied.

That said I'd suggest waiting for Lenovo's new Thinkpads to become available before making a decision. If the new Thinkpad Yoga's digitizer works with Linux it would be a pretty impressive competitor to the MBA, surpassing it in every are except perhaps battery (just depends on how it reviews.) I'm not sure if the TP Yoga has a soft-touch finish though, that's one area where I would go for a Thinkpad over a Macbook, cold aluminium is attractive but not so flesh-friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really don't think retina is that big of a deal. I've owned a MBPr since they launched. But I also regularly use standard res screens, and I barely even notice the difference.

</comment><comment><USER13> My rule of thumb: If it's a CNET article, don't bother reading it.

</comment><comment><USER14> At least for developers who basically do all their work in an OS it's not easy to switch between OSX and Windows, even if Windows machine is way better in spec you have to wait for Apple for better product. Simply because switching from Windows to Mac and vise versa doesn't worth it most of times.

Switching between Linux and Mac is easier but when you put Linux on those machines you lose a lot of battery life optimization and maybe even certain hardware!

<comment><USER15> If you use Windows you can choose from any hardware on the market, including Macs; if you use OS X, you are limited to only Apple-produced machines. Perhaps a reason to make the switch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is the article written by a guy that can't wait any longer for Apple to release a new macbook air? Seems like he's dying for it to come out.

</comment><comment><USER17> This man suffers from a case of what I now call "CK Syndrome". Everything is awesome and he's still complaining.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a 2011 air. If they can make an MBA with retina and good battery life, it's an instant buy for me.

<comment><USER19> Me too, but I was hoping for this year... At this point it looks it will be one more year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I never seen any non-Apple laptop which can actually live over 1~2 hours with only battery from first. They advertises something a lot, but nothing's trustworthy.

MacBook battery also ages and decreases, but at least it's usable for a few years unlike others which is unusable from first.

</comment><comment><USER21> While it's interesting to know about the screen resolution in these new laptops, I notice that that's usually the only aspect of the display mentioned in this type of superficial article. Just as important is the color gamut, color accuracy, etc.

</comment><comment><USER22> "It's certainly doable."

I love these sorts of armchair tech pundit comments.

</comment><comment><USER23> The thing I'm dying for is the trifecta:

\- 1080p+ resolution

\- 8 hour battery life (of actual use, say listening to music, web browsing and typing)

\- Excellent keyboard

Pretty much nothing else matters to me.

<comment><USER24> That's pretty much just the Retina MacBook right there.

<comment><USER25> My retina gets about 3-4 hours, so I don't think 8 hours is a real possibility.

<comment><USER24> Disable your dedicated GPU.

[http://gfx.io/](http://gfx.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the fact that the author replaced his Macbook Air with another Mac says it all.

</comment><comment><USER27> Can someone with the haswell air comment on whether it gets hot under load?

<comment><USER28> Never heats up.. like ever - even running games it stays cool.

<comment><USER11> Well, not quite true, mine gets warm playing Fez.</comment></comment></comment>


Study says ancient Romans may have built "invisibility cloaks" into structures - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/study-says-ancient-romans-may-have-built-invisibility-cloaks-into-structures/ <comment><USER2> This is an astonishingly bad title by the publisher, tortured out by multiple nonsequitors.

</comment><comment><USER3> In this case, they mean invisible from earthquakes. The building's architecture resembles meta-materials which are used to make objects transparent to microwaves.</comment>


Best hacks in your .bash_profile and .bashrc? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.matthewghudson.com/post/8038160924/bash-profile-bashrc-tips

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great for showing/hiding files on OSX:

        alias show='defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE; killall Finder'
        alias hide='defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE; killall Finder'

</comment><comment><USER2> Can't comment on your blog...

Personally, I prefer to move all the git alias into the .gitconfig <https://gist.github.com/943990>

</comment><comment><USER3> At the end of .bashrc,

zsh

<comment><USER4>
        man chsh</comment></comment>


Nile perch. [Stunning Pic of a beautiful species] - <AUTHOR> http://image64.webshots.com/164/9/93/21/415099321rLABIr_ph.jpg

<comment><USER2> Bad link?

Korean carp are a becoming a huge problem on the Mississippi and related rivers. Here's a video clip I shot in 2005 of carp jumping around a boat on the Mississippi. (I'm the one holding the camera.) We tinkered with plans to build a fish-catcher to tow behind the boat and scoop them up but couldn't get past the problem of what then to do with tons of carp. <http://youtube.com/watch?v=fLUd8Z-3zoo>

If .jpgs are the nile perch of social networking, does that make video links the korean carp? Argh, sorry.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you have to copy and paste the think.</comment></comment>


Svgbob – convert ASCII diagrams to SVG, now with styling support - <AUTHOR> https://ivanceras.github.io/svgbob-editor/ <comment><USER2> I recently wrote an editor for this:

[https://mbarkhau.keybase.pub/asciigrid/](https://mbarkhau.keybase.pub/asciigrid/)

<comment> michael-ax excellent! created something sensible and relevant just doing what seemed obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Try this

_______

< Meow >

\</comment><comment>-

            \   ^__^
             \  (oo)\_______
                (__)\       )\/\
                    ||----w |
                    ||     ||

<comment> jagged-chisel [https://imgur.com/a/Og0vYAv](https://imgur.com/a/Og0vYAv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is cool, except the alignment is wrong in almost all diagrams. Labels are off center, things overlap, etc. If that were fixed, it would be very nice and usable.

<comment><USER5> Yes, this is indeed the only reason I couldn't use this otherwise great tool yet.

See my comment here: [https://github.com/ivanceras/svgbob/issues/11#issuecomment-5...](https://github.com/ivanceras/svgbob/issues/11#issuecomment-586307447)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also check out Markdeep, which provides this (and a whole lot more) via JS: [http://casual-effects.com/markdeep/#features](http://casual- effects.com/markdeep/#features)

</comment><comment><USER7> What a great idea! I have been using a text to UML sequence diagram tool and this seems to be very much along the same lines.

<comment><USER8> What is the name of the tool?

<comment><USER7> Its a Mac app: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sequence- diagram/id1195426709?...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sequence- diagram/id1195426709?mt=12)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A thread from 9 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19857349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19857349)

Also 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14422777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14422777)

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice. I'd like the other direction. SVG -> ASCII

<comment><USER11> You could rasterize the SVG with imagemagick then use aalib to create ascii art from that. However the quality of the result would doubtlessly depend on the nature of the SVG in question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That seems pretty great, but I always have the problem of creating the ASCII art in the first place. Is there a tool to help with that?

<comment><USER13> I really liked monodraw but am reluctant to pay for a license now that it's more or less been abandoned. I still like it, but only bought a copy for work at megacorp and foolishly didn't put it in my name.

<comment><USER14> What makes you think it's abandoned? The author is active on Twitter, the last update for dark mode was in May 2019 and I don't see any show stopper bugs or crashes on Catalina. Small utilities like this don't need an update every month. I bought it a while ago because

1) It's very cheap and a great show case for a small niche Mac app that's both beautiful and works well

2) The two times per year I use it, it's already worth it and fun to play around with.

[https://blog.helftone.com](https://blog.helftone.com)

<comment><USER13> _What makes you think it 's abandoned? _

The last blog entry I saw was that it's been put into maintenance mode. If your interest has fizzled but you still want to keep the product out there, that's a great use case for open source. I'm just not that inclined to pay for something that's not being actively developed.

Obviously at some point last year it got a new feature (yay). That speaks to the app itself being feature incomplete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sometimes works with [https://www.asciiart.eu](https://www.asciiart.eu)

For example: [https://www.asciiart.eu/cartoons/felix-the- cat](https://www.asciiart.eu/cartoons/felix-the-cat)

</comment><comment><USER16> Seriously, that is very cool! I wonder how PlantUML diagrams would look in Svgbob or Markdeep, if they were imported from text.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice ! Now I just need to be able to have org mode source blocks for that .

</comment><comment><USER18> This is pretty impressive. Are there builds for a cli?

<comment><USER13> Well the project's workspace defines svgbob and svgbob_cli crates so probably.

<comment><USER18> yes, ive seen that. was just wondering whether/where there are prebuilt binaries i can download directly</comment></comment></comment>


On Radical Candor - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/radical-candor-the-surprising-secret-to-being-a-good-boss/ <comment><USER2> I agree with you there is a huge difference between candor and asshole. Sounds like I could have been more clear about that in my talk, so this is helpful.

In my experience the difference between radical candor and obnoxious aggression lies in how much the boss cares about and knows employees at a human level. I also agree with you that the relationship between a boss and employee is not a friendship. But it IS a relationship. That was how Sheryl knew she had to say to me "you sounded stupid," and how she knew I would welcome her question about whether I felt nervous. Other people on Sheryl's team were less stubborn than I am, and she could get through to them in a gentler way. BUT she DID have to get through to all of us.

It's never fun to hear when you've screwed up. I think too much management advice puts too much pressure on bosses to tell people things that will inevitably sting in a way that somehow won't sting. That's just not possible...That's why being a boss is so hard.

<comment><USER3> I think "assholes" might be people who personally care AND practice direct challenges, but do so in a way that shame and blame individuals. Calling out mistakes is fine, as long as you don't assign biased blame to the person making the mistake. Startups are already difficult endeavors without the added pressures of being directly on the hook for a mistake. Teams should accept the suffering from an individual's mistakes with the assumption mistakes will be made by team members. If a given team member makes too many mistakes, then perhaps a review is necessary, but otherwise, it's a _team_ mistake which can be learned from and used to improve the team and product.

<comment><USER2> I think that the key is to make it safe to make mistakes...this also makes it safe to point them out...

This may be sematics, but in my experience, the bona fide assholes don't point out mistakes because they care about helping the person who made the mistake to improve. And so when an asshole sees they've made a person suffer, they don't care, and don't take the time to reassure the person that they have confidence in their abilities. When a person is being radically candid and they see the person is suffering, they take the time to show they care and to reassure that person they have confidence in their abilities--but it a way that makes it clear the mistake was a mistake, or that their work isn't good enough...

<comment><USER4> Sure, bona fide assholes do that. Maybe what GP is getting at, though, is that there are people out there who, despite genuinely caring for other people, thing that the right way to react to mistakes is shaming and blaming. Whether because they don't know a better way, think that other ways are ineffective, or because of a quasi-religious feeling that it's right to act that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is candor? Speaking one's mind? Revealing one's deepest thoughts? Mentioning things that you know some people won't want to hear?

When we think of candor we imagine a straight-talking cowboy type, or a brash New Yorker, or a direct and confident woman, etc. These images make us feel that if only we could tell it like it is all the BS would go away.

What candor really means is being unguarded. Think candid camera. We are candid when we make no pretense and avoid posturing, when we keep it real. This means we don't tailor our perspective and behavior to get a specific result or to seem impressive, we just do our own thing, like the victims of candid camera videos.

Real candor requires trust. Where organizations have major trust lapses is where candor seems the most lacking.

If a project is behind schedule, the organization should simply respond appropriately, which means either changing scope or changing the timeline. When there is finger pointing and pressure to lowball estimates, there is a trust breakdown from the outset.

If there is sufficient trust, there is no issue with candor because you just say what you want and everyone knows you are trying to make things better. When trust breaks down, your words might seem critical or like personal attacks.

So having radical candor is great, but it means having radical trust. It must be safe to be on either end of the candor event :) That includes cases when a team member is not able to perform or when a team member wants a promotion that he/she isn't quite ready for. It must be OK to be honest in either direction, which means the firm should respect it if the employee wishes to leave, and the employee should respect it if the firm isn't happy with performance and there doesn't appear to be a path to improvement.

All in all, having a systems mindset and a growth mindset goes a long way toward having a high trust culture. But startups are at a disadvantage from the start since everyone is expecting a massive growth trajectory and in many cases founders are quick to blame mistakes on specific individuals to explain a bad quarter. Having a culture of trust requires the team taking it on the chin and the board supporting and encouraging a systems approach.

So if your founder is the only one in board meetings, chances are that is because blame is being cast and deception is occurring on in both directions.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Sandberg pushed forward, asking whether Scott's ums were the result of nervousness. She even suggested that Google could hire a speaking coach to help. Still, Scott brushed off the concern; it didn't seem like an important issue. "Finally, Sheryl said, 'You know, Kim, I can tell I'm not really getting through to you. I'm going to have to be clearer here. When you say um every third word, it makes you sound stupid.'"

""The vertical axis is what I call the 'give a damn' axis," Scott says. "Part of the reason Sheryl was able to say to me so bluntly, 'You sounded stupid,' was that I knew that she cared personally about me."

This doesn't sit well with me because I am skeptical that bosses are going to be able to hit the proper mean of communication that works for each employee. Additionally, I am skeptical that bosses "caring personally for their employees" is actually fully possible or desirable all of the time, since there's always a frequently severe and irreparable conflict of interest between the institution and the individual. I don't want to give or receive friendship from my bosses (as we are only temporary means to an end for each other), I want courteous distance and realistic, bite sized action items to improve on.

For the author, her boss gave her highly appreciated and blunt criticism, and offered a solution. For another employee, the boss has just ruined their day, week, and possibly self image, while (incorrectly) assuming that the boss and the boss's boss thinks they are stupid. For yet another employee, the message of the boss is noted and acted upon, but the pushy probing regarding nervousness is weirdly personal and not at all appreciated.

I am usually pretty blunt, but I don't understand the fascination in managerial culture with intentionally toeing the line between asshole and "candor"\-- and it pops up in more dimensions than just feedback. For whatever reason, there is glorification of putting down other people in a professional context.

<comment><USER7> In that example, Sandberg tried a tactful approach twice before being blunt. If she had stopped giving the guidance because Scott didn't understand the tactful suggestions, Scott would not have learned from that scenario and may have been less successful in the long run.

I don't see anything in this story that paints Sandberg as an asshole. And the only thing "radical" about her candor is that most managers (myself included sometimes) shy away from pushing if our directs don't understand what we're saying the first time.

This article gave me some useful encouragement to push myself to give feedback to people who need it even if it's uncomfortable for me.

<comment><USER8> What's wrong with, "As a listener, it's very distracting; moreso than you might think. You _need_ to kick that habit to be an effective public speaker."? It's entirely possible to be candid without putting another person (your direct report, even!) down.

<comment><USER9> And this would have been a third attempt in the same vein. Kim may have then replied "Why does it matter if I am a good public speaker, the numbers were great!", in which case, you have to remove the last case of sugar coating and tell it how it is.

<comment><USER8> But that _isn 't_ how it is. Someone who says "um" a lot while speaking _doesn 't_ sound stupid. They're grating, to many in the audience, but that doesn't reflect on the speaker's ability (except, obviously, their public speaking ability). That means the audience will be focusing on the speaker's verbal tics instead of the message that was intended, which is the root problem. The word "stupid" was intended to startle the employee into action by how rude it was.

I mean, obviously, in this particular instance with this particular person, it was effective, and for all I know, the manager is a really sharp observer of her reports and knew this was the right approach in this situation. I don't think it's a good _general_ approach, and I'm afraid people are going to take away the wrong thing from this article. It's not good managerial advice to say, "Tell your employees they sound stupid if they are bad public speakers!" It's better managerial advice to say, "Know your employees, and how each individual might be best motivated, and don't accept complacency." You have to be really careful when taking cues from drill sergeants, because for a lot of people, that approach will backfire horribly, and the message will be overshadowed by the delivery style.

<comment><USER10> I'm a bit confused at the certainty of your argument. There are many people who believe that someone saying "um" sounds stupid. Your absolute assertion to the opposite seems rather like "I don't think someone saying 'um' sounds stupid so this isn't a valid criticism".

Are people going to hear critiques if they don't want to? The message getting through is what matters, that's a person by person problem. Saying something make someone sound stupid is certainly not "taking cues from drill sergeants".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The flip side of this is being able to accept constructive criticism. While Scott learned a lot about how to be a manager herself, the true takeaway here is probably more that Scott was able to recognize and accept Sheryl's valid criticism. Just because someone tells me the truth -- candidly or not! -- doesn't mean I'm going to listen. There has to be a level of respect and trust in that relationship. I have to _believe_ them when they say that.

I'm terrible at accepting feedback like this from my friends, but when I met my old boss for lunch last week, he gave me almost the same advice they did. And somehow it stuck. I'm self-aware enough to realize that I put a lot of stock and respect into what he thinks of me and I trust his opinion, more than I trust my friends who aren't necessarily tech people or managers.

And maybe that's another fault within myself. My friends clearly gave me solid advice, but it took someone else to give it to me again before it stuck. How can I learn from this and possibly take that advice sooner?

I appreciate Scott's story, and I absolutely agree with her conclusions across the board, but I think it's only a small piece of the overall puzzle.

</comment><comment><USER12> I know a few people who pride themselves on their unblinking candor. Most of them, in reality, just get a kick out of constantly shitting on people and they use "candor" as cover for their behavior.

Here is a good rule of thumb: Is telling someone something hard going to directly benefit them, you, or someone else their behavior is affecting? The go for it and give them _constructive_ and _actionable_ feedback. Just telling them they blew it, they are pissing you off, etc is just shitting on them.

OTOH, not giving people hard feedback because it is awkward is a betrayal of the relationship you have with them because you aren't helping them be better or at least understand the situation they are in when you could have just to save yourself from your own squeamishness.

<comment><USER13> I think that's basically what she means with the graph. Radical candor exists in the section where you confront them because you care about them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know this approach as simply "being Dutch". And it's a major source of culture shock for expats working in the Netherlands.

</comment><comment><USER15> This jumped out at me:

 _"Part of the reason Sheryl was able to say to me so bluntly, 'You sounded stupid,' was that I knew that she cared personally about me. She had done a thousand things that showed me that."_

This suggests that before one can practice radical candor, one needs to build a foundation of caring and trust first. Without it, my experience suggests that the results will be more hit-or-miss -- some people just get defensive almost no matter how you frame it.

</comment><comment><USER16> The hedge fund Bridgewater Associates has a very similar philosophy (some would say a cult[1]); they call it "radical transparency". It's a major component of Ray Dalio's "Principles", which is a 123 page manuscript[2] that prospective candidates and new joiners are advised to read and absorb.

Not that Bridgewater should be the ultimate test case for this way of operating but it's a notoriously unforgiving place to work. The turnover rate there is 25% in the first 18 months[3].

It seems you just have to have really thick skin (or be really jaded) to be able to handle "radical candor" or "radical transparency". Furthermore, it's evidently really tricky to avoid devolving into pure invective. (I guess, in terms of Kim's graph, it's hard to stay high enough on the Y axis as you drift to the right on the X axis.)

[1] [http://nymag.com/news/business/wallstreet/ray- dalio-2011-4/](http://nymag.com/news/business/wallstreet/ray-dalio-2011-4/)

[2] [http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...](http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgewater- Associates-Ray-Dalio-Principles.pdf)

[3] [http://www.ai- cio.com/channels/story.aspx?id=3735&page=3&p=3](http://www.ai- cio.com/channels/story.aspx?id=3735&page=3&p=3)

<comment><USER17> > Not that Bridgewater should be the ultimate test case for this way of > operating but it's a notoriously unforgiving place to work. The turnover > rate there is 25% in the first 18 months[3].

What's the turnover rate after 18 months? Maybe they're just "bad" at hiring (or their hiring criteria is such that they need more than a few hours of interviews to satisfy them), but the people who really fit stay there a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> TLDR: Give people honest feedback, but make sure you have proven that you care about them first.

Unfortunately, this post's strong no-bullshit language is contradicted by the substance and form of the message given (magic quadrant warning). It takes a long time on the windup and goes light on the proof.

The Sheryl Sandberg anecdote, which is trotted out as an example of effective candor, is actually a perfect example of a trivial correction made in the face of overwhelming performance. Not a hard thing in the realm of hard things.

All candor is radical, and partial candor is a lie ... of omission. So the radical is just branding, and so is the culture of "guidance". Making up language is how academics and corporate gurus differentiate themselves, often needlessly.

Finally, there are deeper flaws in the idea of candor promotion:

* There is no one truth. We don't always arrive at a consensus or an objective truth by airing our differences. So let's be clear before embarking on that path, that we may just manage to create a very candid fog of strong opinions, as different subjective truths battle it out.

* In a culture that values candor, all liars are candid. That is, promoting candor does not solve the underlying dynamic, which is that one side will likely win and one will lose, and not every side is fighting for the right reasons.

* In a culture that values candor, bosses get to be candid first. That is, there is a real risk of feedback flowing from HQ to the trenches and not vice versa. Beware of candor as privilege.

Anyone who needs this type of advice should just go straight to "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz. It's all there, without the rebranding.

</comment><comment><USER19> On the example mentioned in the article about the "um" issue, getting feedback like that from someone (a boss, or whoever) is one thing _when you have actually requested it_ or when it's part of some kind of formal meeting where mentorship or guidance is expected. But during some random/off-the-cuff chat "on a walk" or in a hallway or whatever? That's ridiculous. I wouldn't want to work at a company where every time I give a presentation or put some kind of effort out there, some boss is going to pounce on me and start telling me what _they_ think I did or did not do right or if I seem stupid or whatever. Way to go turning your employees into cowering bundles of nerves.

Ugh. Every time I think maybe, just maybe, the cult of being a Jobs-ian __*-hole is loosing its appeal in tech circles, this kind of stuff rears its ugly head. Meh.

<comment><USER20> I'm surprised by this reaction. Here's a more sympathetic reading: Sheryl thought Kim showed great potential and was doing great work. HOWEVER, it was clear to Sheryl that the presentation was super awkward from an audience POV. The problem would probably never be obvious to the speaker, because we usually are unaware of our Ums while giving a presentation. So Sheryl only wants to help the speaker. Is it a little embarrassing? Maybe, but it shouldn't be.

Now the author is a better speaker, and better professionally for it. Isn't that a great outcome?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a family member that is incredibly smart but thinks 'on the hoof', in the middle of a sentence he'll just freeze and go 'umm'. I'm always tempted to finish the sentences but I've learned to bite that back and wait, usually the wait is more than worth it. Some people can form their thoughts and then spit them out fully formed in one coherent stream, others are confronted with their own words as input when they speak them and will adjust their thinking in real time. Both can lead to new insights and I wouldn't immediately say that someone sounds 'stupid' for pausing in the middle of a sentence and doing some inner processing, especially not if the outcome is good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER22> This sounds similar to Bridgewater's culture of radical transparency. The first I had a debrief with my boss I cried all afternoon, but now it's growing on me a bit. Or I just have Stockholm syndrome.

<comment><USER2> There is a huge difference between Bridgewater's approach, which I think is called radical honesty, and radical candor, at lesas as I see it (but tell me why I'm wrong and I'll learn something:)

Here is why Bridgewater's approach is obnoxious aggression in my book. There, employees are encouraged to be brutal in their criticism, a policy called "radical honesty." In one meeting, the criticism got so harsh that somebody started to cry. The conversation was taped, and an executive decided it would be a good idea to send the taped conversation, tears and all, out to the whole company to listen to. He thought people could learn a lot from the incident. My friend who worked there learned he wanted to get a job at a company with a different kind of culture.

The intentions here were probably not as bad as the results. The leaders at the company wanted everyone to say what they really thought. The idea of radical honesty is really appealing to me. But, I saw two big problems with this approach to encouraging criticism. The obvious one was encouraging public rather than private criticism. Public debate and disagreement, yes. Public criticism, no. This mistake was compounded--criticism wasn't just public, it was publicized in a way that humiliated an employee. The less obvious mistake was that the policy of "radical honesty" inadvertently sowed the seeds of arrogance, not humility. Why? If honesty is good, surely radical honesty is better. Interestingly, it was the words of a Jesuit missionary in the Congo who best explained the problem with honesty to me. "It's very important to tell the truth," he said, and then looked heavenward. "But who knows what the Truth is???" When somebody says, "I'm going to be honest with you," it implies they know the truth and you don't. There's not a lot of humility in that.

This is why I use the term "candor." "Honesty" can lead to arrogance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can we not use the word radical for things that are not radical?

<comment><USER24> What would you call this, and what do you consider radical?

I think it describes the nature of it things like "radical honesty". Honesty is just the same old virtue and approach we all know, just interpreted slightly differently and taken to an extreme.

</comment></comment><comment> chroem- I find this pretty disgusting. So the expectation for everyone else is to behave as though you're in a safe space and speak no ill of another person, but if you have enough money you can just throw all common courtesy out the window?

<comment><USER25> You might want to re-open the tab and do a browser-find for "Encourage Your Whole Team to be Radically Candid" and read the part of the article you skipped.

You may still not agree, but you speak as if the article is about management only, which is objectively untrue.

<comment><USER26> I would submit that anyone who thinks employees are ever going to feel 100% free to bluntly criticize the person who approves or signs their paycheck to their face is an idiot.

(Does that qualify as radical candor?)

<comment><USER2> You are right, that is HARD. That's why bosses have to work so hard to get their employees to criticize them...To GET criticism. Will have a bunch of suggestions in the book I'm writing for this. Open to others that you have. That's also why I recommend a bunch of things that put bosses on a more equal footing with employees.

<comment><USER25> You're getting priceless feedback on the first-order misunderstandings people have about this idea here. :)

Do you have a mailing list or anything for when the book is done? (If you look at my HN profile I've got an email address you can stick on it, if you set one up later.)

I do find myself wondering if perhaps the book will face an issue from missing tone & body language that naturally happens in a talk. If I were to go kinda far out on the crazy idea scale, I would consider borrowing something from the indie video game world; you can do a lot of setting the tone of a long series of text snippets by recording high quality voice samples. Once we have the sense from high-quality voice acting, we can fill in the gaps from there. It might be interesting to experiment with pairing the book with a presentation given on the first chapter in video form, which would then set the tone for the rest of the book. (I think people, rather understandably, have a lot of preexisting emotion they are bringing to this topic, and it may be worth taking extra steps to try to defuse it, so you have a chance of communicating your points.)

Crazy thought, anyhow.

<comment><USER2> You are right, these comments are really helpful! It's so easy to say something that gives people the idea quite opposite to what I'm trying to say...

Yes, adding you to mailing list...

Love the idea of turning the book into a kind of video game; also thinking of building some tools that will make it easier to implement ideas, and buidling community around the book...

<comment><USER25> Well, I just meant a recorded video to set tone, but if you get a good idea off of "video game" far be it from me to discourage that.

<comment><USER2> :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Docs Users Targeted by Phishing Scam - <AUTHOR> http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/google-docs-users-targeted-sophisticated-phishing-scam <comment><USER2> What's to stop the attacker from going the next step and forwarding the user/pass to Google, triggering the SMS for 2FA, and then prompting me to enter it?

Now all you can hope is that Google notices the source IP or user-agent of the attacker doesn't match up with the user's usual pattern.

<comment><USER3> If they use CSRF tokens, this wouldn't be possible.

<comment><USER4> I don't see how CSRF tokens apply here. They can login as you on another machine.

<comment><USER5> You did not read the parent comment. They cannot (or should not) be able to forward the login to Google's real form and trigger SMS 2FA because the real form should be protected by CSRF tokens.

<comment><USER6> No, CSRF isn't relevant. I'm an attacker and I have a server that's pretending to be a Google login form. I also have a client computer with a scripted browser pretending to be someone trying to login to Google. When you come to my page and login, I steal your data and immediately have my client program use it to login. If Google asks my client browser for a 2FA code, behind the scenes I forward that request to you and then when you answer, I forward the answer back to Google. From what Google can see, it just looks like someone logging in from a new computer.

None of this has anything to do with cross-site scripting. It's a MITM attack. CSRF doesn't come into play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Surprised no one's used this opportunity to talk about Google's gnubby / FIDO / U2F plans.

Non-phishable two-factor auth token: [http://fidoalliance.org/](http://fidoalliance.org/)

See presentation: [https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/presentation/d/16mB3Npt...](https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/presentation/d/16mB3Nptab1i4-IlFbn6vfkWYk- ozN6j3-fr7JL8XVyA/edit#slide=id.g19c09a112_2_0)

<comment><USER8> Sure, I'll just click on that google docs link to read about it...

<comment><USER9> The pathname "/a/google.com" means it does come from within Google.

<comment><USER10> No, it doesn't. You can put any valid Google Apps domain there.

See: [https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/document/d/1MBxYZ9C51t9...](https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/document/d/1MBxYZ9C51t9sqL83D3T5708eRk05WaYbE1Dw0qX- iB8/)

If you're logged into a Google Apps domain it will change the google.com to match your domain. If you're logged into a regular Google account it will remain as google.com.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for correcting me. I never realized this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is why EVERYONE should have Two-Step Verification ([https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/180744?hl=en](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/180744?hl=en)) enabled if you care a little bit about your Google Account and the data you have stored there. This kind of attack will expose your password, but the attackers wont get in your account anyway.

<comment><USER12> I have it, but one thing to consider when you add Two-step is that you need a plan when you travel overseas and may not have the same sim card. Not difficult to consider, but you still need to. Being in Europe for a few weeks with no email is no fun.

<comment><USER11> The two step app works even with no connection to the internet. I dont know how but it does. I think you dont need to have the same sim card. only the phone turned on.

<comment><USER13> Google Authenticator uses TOTP (RFC 6238), which means the codes are a function of time plus a secret key. As long as your phone's clock is reasonably accurate, the app will work without any network access.

[http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238)

<comment><USER14> You definitely don't need network access. I use Google Authenticator on my Wifi only tablet. You need an internet connection to sync it to Google's key but not after that. And, yes, when the tablet's clock is off by a few minutes, the code doesn't work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting how this is done - and there's no real workaround except to force 2FA.

<comment><USER6> How does 2FA solve this? You're interacting with an attacker who is prompting you for information in real time.

<comment><USER16> Right. This is MITM attack and they can defeat most of 2FA out there today.

One technique that might help is to make user choose a picture during account registration. During login show that picture, if user does not see correct picture he would suspect something.

It does not have to be picture, could be style or background of login component.

<comment><USER6> If the server just knows what picture is attached to my account, couldn't this attacker simply request the picture on my behalf and then show it to me?

<comment><USER11> That information would obviusly not be accessible via ANY api. So that would be something only Google private apps have access to.

<comment><USER17> Doesn't really matter if there is an API for it or not, if Google were to display it prior to you being authenticated (which they would have to for it to have any impact in this sort of attack), it would be fairly trivial for the attack code to (behind the scenes) present themselves as you to Google and then scrape the correct image from Google's response to their request. There are various things Google could do to make this more difficult, like some fancy rendering via canvas or webgl instead of just using a bog standard img tag, but to counter this the attack could just run a headless rendering browser and pixel scrape the resulting image.

Such a verification image makes the MITM attack a bit harder to code, but not really by much, and in the process might introduce an increased false sense of security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it is important that Symantec should mention how the URL looks like. From reading this news I can only assume that this happens with hosted websites from Google Drive which have an URL like [https://googledrive.com/host/someidhere](https://googledrive.com/host/someidhere) This warning could be better.

</comment><comment><USER19> Since we are talking about phishing in Google's domains, can someone explain me why [http://www.blogspot.co.uk](http://www.blogspot.co.uk) (and .ie, and .fr, etc.) leads to someone's specific blog, instead of doing like the [http://www.blogspot.com](http://www.blogspot.com) site does, which leads to Google's login?

What prevents this "www" Blogger user from mounting a phishing attack?

<comment><USER20> Nice, www.neocities.com had a similar flaw.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 _After pressing "Sign in", the user's credentials are sent to a PHP script on a compromised web server._

I might be missing something, but how does this part work?

Is it because the document in the Google Drive folder is actually a html document that the browser is loading (and executing javascript of)?

<comment><USER6> AFAIK, it's not a legitimate login form. It's a attacker-created form that just _looks_ like the login form. The trick is that they used Google Docs to host it on a .google.com server.

<comment><USER21> it wasn't actually hosted on a .google.com domain. It was googledrive.com, which is also owned by Google, but you should never expect a login form on that domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And that's why you shouldn't serve user content on the same domain as your own stuff.

<comment><USER23> Which they don't. Google Drive data is served from a different URL for precisely this reason.

<comment><USER22> They use a different subdomain, but both the official login page and user docs are served from a *.google.com hostname. I'm not sure if that counts or not.

<comment><USER23> The _real_ login page is on a *.google.com domain, of course. But this phishing scheme is on a different domain, namely [https://googledrive.com/..](https://googledrive.com/..).

<comment><USER22> Good! I tried loading a document of my own but only figured out how to get a preview and a download. Shouldn't have extrapolated from there, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Symantec customers are protected against this threat.

How?

</comment><comment><USER24> I've seen an account hacked already.</comment>


Introducing Algolia Places - <AUTHOR> https://blog.algolia.com/introducing-algolia-places/ <comment><USER2> How does this compare with Google's places autocomplete?

<comment><USER3> [Josh from Algolia here] Places is designed to be very customizable in terms of the UX and the data you put in front of the user. For UX we have sensible defaults but you have full control over the look and feel. For data you can mix in results from you own database or other APIs (e.g. show the names of cities alongside search results for listings in those cities).</comment></comment>


Helping organizations do more without collecting more data- Google Security Blog - <AUTHOR> https://security.googleblog.com/2019/06/helping-organizations-do-more-without-collecting-more-data.html <comment><AUTHOR> Paper here: [https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/723.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/723.pdf)</comment>