When Schools Overlook Introverts - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/09/introverts-at-school-overlook/407467?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Thinking back to my own middle/high school experiences, group work just gives the poor students a free pass to slack off, because they know the good students in their group will pick up the slack.

I usually worked alone if the option was available, because if I worked in a group I'd almost always end up having to do / re-do everyone else's sub-par work anyway. It was the same workload either way, but working in a group would essentially be giving others "counterfeit" grades (based on my effort, not theirs), the existence of which necessarily devalues my "genuine" grade.

<comment><USER3> Group work _can work_ , but it needs a different setting. I studied at an university where half of the time was group work and it worked because:

 _The students had 100% authority over how groups are formed_ , i.e. number of groups and who are in which group. The teachers had nothing to say in this.

The result is that:

1) it quickly became common knowledge who the slackers were (and who were the opposite).

2) nobody wanted to have the slackers in their group, so they were kind of ostracized and had to make their own group. They often ended up with the bad marks they deserve.

3) everybody learned that you had to do your homework/groupwork if you wanted to be part of a good group. It became a lot more difficult to get away with lame excuses for not having done what you promised. People really worked hard.

3b) If a group member didn't do their work, the other members could exclude the person from the group, and that person then had to make a project on their own, which is really really difficult. _Again, the teachers had nothing to say in this, they could not veto an exclusion._

4) you ended up with a notion that your reputation had important consequences, just like in real life. Introverted people who did great work were popular group members.

5) Bonus: you learned to value different skills in people. Instead of wanting to be around people exactly like yourself, you learned that people who are (and think) different are very valuable for good projects.

<comment><USER4> That sounds like it definitely works in the university setting you're describing, and sounds like the same type of thing that would have happened in the middle school setting I used to work in. The unfortunate thing in both settings is that the slackers always get bad marks.

This is especially bad for a 7th grader when poor school performance can have little to do with the student's actual skills and a lot to do with their home life and/or parental involvement.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you could possibly design a mixed-skill education model where slackers _don 't_ get bad marks. If slackers get good marks, marks are meaningless.

<comment><USER4> Completely agree.

I guess I was more commenting about the fact that is doesn't matter whether the groups are self-formed or teacher-formed, or university-level or middle school-level because the outcome will always be the same: slackers get bad marks.

One of my goals as a teacher was to identify "slacker" students who didn't like to read and then try to help them find enjoyment from reading. Usually the reason for not liking reading was that they hadn't found a subject or genre that they connected with or were allowed to explore in depth.

That is kind of off-topic, but I always felt like the marks were only one aspect of education and even if the student ended up with bad marks, they could still grow and be a different person by the time they were done with the school year.

<comment><USER5> > I guess I was more commenting about the fact that is doesn't matter whether > the groups are self-formed or teacher-formed, or university-level or middle > school-level because the outcome will always be the same: slackers get bad > marks.

Actually, that's not true in my experience. When a teacher assigns groups, then they often force slackers into groups with hard-working over achievers who pick up all the slack. So the slacker does get a good mark.

Not that I think that's a good thing for everyone. It pisses off the student who did all the hard work, makes marks meaningless, and allows the slacker to coast further without learning anything.

Yet it's disturbingly common.

<comment><USER6> Well, the teacher helped the "slacker" student improve their grades... must be a great teacher!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd say that most paradigms of grade school style learning overlook introverts by default. There's usually some sort of grade-based participation bonus for speaking out and answering the teacher's questions as soon as they're posed. There's almost always group project components as well, in which introverts won't be able to shine as much.

IMHO it's part of a larger system of not valuing introverts as a society. Being talkative gets people noticed, and being quiet gets people forgotten, and, as a result, neglected. I don't have any real solution to propose, just an observation that in most cases, introverts are worse off for their social disposition. Ambiverts are probably the best positioned for success, provided that they are able to play up their extraversion when around extroverts and play it down when around introverts.

<comment><USER8> Speaking in front of people and working in groups are extremely valuable skills, even for introverts. This is like saying that people who don't enjoy physical activity should skip P.E. class -- in both cases there is both a developmental and health component at play.

I am extremely introverted, but have no problem speaking to groups of people or even working in groups. I've always felt that my voice has been heard and respected because when I do talk people know that I have definitely thought it through. However, there are always those people who expect you to act exactly as they do.

The actual problem seems to be that kids aren't really taught to hold respect for one another. Because of that once you exhibit any kind of quirky behavior you become the target of joking/teasing and other forms of alienation that may only amplify your initial weirdness.

<comment><USER9> "Speaking in front of people and working in groups are extremely valuable skills, even for introverts."

Yes -- and the problem is that very few places actually _teach_ these skills to introverts. Rather, you are supposed to already know them.

"This is like saying that people who don't enjoy physical activity should skip P.E. class -- in both cases there is both a developmental and health component at play."

It's funny you should bring up PE here, because the same mechanism is usually at play there. PE classes don't focus on the kids who are bad at sports. They focus on those who are already good at it, for whatever reason.

<comment><USER10> "It's funny you should bring up PE here, because the same mechanism is usually at play there. PE classes don't focus on the kids who are bad at sports. They focus on those who are already good at it, for whatever reason."

It's been a frustration of mine for a while that P.E. stands for Physical Education, but rarely are kids educated about exercise and nutrition. Kids don't learn about exercise increasing endorphins that, in turn, elevate mood. They don't learn about cardiovascular conditioning and how it helps with some asthmatic conditions. Forget about anyone mentioning the role of stretching in our health as we age. Nutrition is neglected entirely, but learning about "carb bombing" and its effect on mood would do a lot of good. Instead they throw a ball around and get out aggression (or try to hide from the kids who are getting out aggression).

I read an interview with Anne Hathaway which discussed her training for the Catwoman role. Prior to that role, she hated exercise and thought that just because she was skinny, she was therefore healthy. (Let's ignore that she admitted in another interview to being a heavy smoker for a good portion of her life.) Once her trainer got her past the initial strain of conditioning muscles, she found she liked how she felt when she exercised. I think a lot of people developed a dislike of exercise early in their lives due to an association of exercise with team sports, which developed in PE classes. I think it needs to change.

<comment><USER11> > due to an association of exercise with team sports

And intrinsic competitiveness. I remember from my school PE classes (UK) that even distance running was _always_ practiced as a race.

Anyone who runs knows that unless of course you're very elite, your performance vs other people is almost entirely unimportant to you. It's your own personal performance that matters, and this is as true on a solitary training run as it is taking part in a massive 'race' event such as a marathon.

Competing against yourself (trying to improve) is incredibly rewarding in a totally different way to competing against and beating other people. In a solitary sport like running, nobody gets to judge you but you, the motivation and joy that comes from the exercise and fitness improvements is almost entirely internal - to put it bluntly nobody else cares when you shave 5 seconds off your PB, but to you it's a wonderfully satisfying experience.

I always wondered why PE teachers never seemed to approach exercise and sport from this angle. They're really missing a trick as I believe discovering this would really encourage a lot more kids to keep exercising throughout and after school as a result.

As it happened I was always reasonably competent at sport, never the best at anything but good enough to be competitive at all the sports I played (at least vs other amateur kids). So for me it was OK to have a competitive element, but I can completely see that that if sport and exercise is always focused around competition, and a kid is _consistently_ losing at everything they try, that's going to be a huge long-lasting turn off from exercise. Focusing more on 'this is intrinsically fun to do on your own' might change that significantly.

<comment><USER12> In the United States, in my experience, PE teachers are generally employed primarily as coaches for the schools' sports teams. As a result, they're not especially interested in exercise for its own sake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a strong introvert I remember sitting in class, age 8 or so, and wishing with all my heart that I could have a big thick stone enclosure around my desk, extending halfway up to the ceiling. I was working on multiplication tables at the time and was feeling extremely overstimulated to the point where I couldn't focus (and to clarify, I didn't know I was overstimulated, or even that I couldn't focus, at the time).

Since then I've learned more about introversion, and I now look back and recognize the brief moments when the school system tried to reach into my introvert life and make things easier. Unfortunately, by the time they filtered from administration down to me, these attempts (e.g. typology testing for career and school advice, or special workshops) were either so watered down as to be completely useless or so boring-sounding and voluntary that no student in their right mind would attend them without prodding.

<comment><USER14> Funny, that's how I feel in open-plan offices...

<comment><USER15> I've worked with people who don't seem to grasp the concept that I am more productive at home vs. a large, loud, open office.

At one point I seriously considered getting horse blinders to wear because where I sat at one company gave me essentially a panoramic view of the entire office. With half-height cube walls, that meant I literally saw everything out of the corners of my eyes. Could not get anything done for the life of me.

Contrast that with home where I can have as much or as little light as I want, it is mostly silent (unless I want music), I'm in a safe and familiar environment, no distractions except those I allow by checking email/Slack, and my productivity skyrockets when I get in the zone.

<comment><USER4> This is an interesting comment on an an article about introverts in school settings. I wonder how many people with similar thoughts on open-plan offices see homeschooling as a best alternative to typical classroom environment.

Homeschooling often takes the approach where high productivity levels mean you are done with school in a few hours as opposed to sitting around killing time. This is also similar to frustrations voiced here about having to sit around the office even if they have completed their work.

There are likely more overlaps too.

In the same way that modern schooling schedules is supposedly designed to mimic industrial scheduling, perhaps current schooling models is moving in the direction of mimicking the modern workplace.

<comment><USER15> That's a really interesting point. Personally, I think there is a ton of value in the social experiences you are exposed to in school that are critical for a successful future.

That said, while I don't love the idea of homeschooling, I would have LOVED an approach of "learn the material at home on your own and use class time to ask questions/review homework" or something of the sort. I'm a strong visual learner, and one of my big frustrations with schooling was that so much of it was auditory. Between scrambling to take notes and such, I often missed out on large chunks of the content.

By learning at home, I could spend as much (or as little) time as needed on topics, and then ensured my comprehension by using class time to review with the expert and learn from my mistakes vs. just getting something back with a letter grade and little/no opportunity to dig further.

People learn differently and schools need to start supporting that.

The point about sitting around an office after completing work is something I've heard before too. I've never really been in a professional job where "I completed my work" for the day. In situations where that is the expectation, I think companies should either make it clear they are paying for you to fill a seat regardless, or respect the time off and allow you to manage your time as you see fit with the assumption you are a responsible adult.

Even when there is more to do, there are days where I'm just not feeling productive, and I can stare at a screen and not make any progress. Rather than force myself I shift mental gears and do things to break me out of it (which may or may not be work related). I wish schools did a better job of this too instead of forcing you to plow through (which often leads to dozing off in class).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I was studying to be an educator I was often branded a heretic for challenging the new modes of teaching as being hypocritical and potentially unfounded. I never became an educator after student teaching. This article really puts into words my issues with group learning, project based learning, and all the other buzzwords flying around schools of education. I remember being a student in school and relishing the moments where I could be by myself and focus on whatever needed doing. Now students are lucky to have a moment of peace as they're prodded into unnatural learning environments meant to mimic a "real world" that frankly doesn't exist.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've often been told about the benefits of "group work" and "collaborative working" and thus "open plan offices" but I feel like that much energy can reduce the depth of knowledge and thought. You're replacing depth with breadth. The operating theory is that by offering a multitude of view points, you make up for the single thinker. And in areas of human dilemma, this can work. For example, consider marketing or other human-centric activities.

But when the problem gets difficult, the essential superficial nature of this style of problem solving becomes apparent. This is where a single member then leaves the group, sequesters their self in solitude then emerges with the answer later.

<comment><USER18> Open plan offices are all about one thing: maximizing headcount per sq/ft. All designs focus on putting more people into the same amount of space. Assigning dedicating space to one person is not as efficient as making the space first come first server.

IMHO organizations that embrace open plan offices need to 100% embrace work from home/telecommuting. Because after all, if you don's need to have a face to face, why do you _need_ to be sitting in an open plan office space? Boggles the mind really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My feeling is that school was an introvert heaven as compared to adult professional life.

<comment><USER20> This can be true or not depending on job.

But the point is valid: what the linked article is pointing out is the _motion toward_ a more extrovert-oriented educational philosophy. The truth is that classical education has always been designed for the introvert: students were required to sit quietly at their desks, wait to be questioned, do work in silence, etc...

And the truth is that some students (the extroverts) do comparatively poorly in this environment. So we're retooling to better serve them, potentially at the expense of the ones who were already well-served.

I don't know that this is an easy problem, but it's certainly more complicated than "introverts are discriminated against in school".

<comment><USER9> "The truth is that classical education has always been designed for the introvert: students were required to sit quietly at their desks, wait to be questioned, do work in silence, etc..."

True, although I think that had more to do with making kids obedient, or expecting them to be obedient, rather than school being "designed for introverts". Also, putting a bunch of kids together in a room, and expecting them to speak up or do things in front of the class, certainly don't favor the introverted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Top-down prescription of how children and teachers ought to run a school will always neglect particular groups and individuals. There is no one system or theory that meets the needs of everyone. One would think that the solution would be to decentralize the organization of schools and take a bottom-up approach, and not merely at the level of teachers, but at the level of students. Students deserve autonomy and a voice in their learning environment. Teachers deserve autonomy in designing curricula.

</comment><comment><USER22> I failed at several higher education schools in France PRECISELY because of group projects.

All my scores were fine or high, except for those stupid team project which counted for a huge score coefficient.

Failed so many job interviews because I don't have a degree or because I'm less social.

The worst is when some director argued with me that human are a social species.

Just like Susan Cain wrote about it, it really seems that there is a Salesman culture. It almost seems that we considers introverts to be handicapped.

<comment><USER23> Sorry to hear. But surely you have to agree that your introversion _has_ handicapped you significantly in life?

From your own story, it sounds like it stopped you from being able to complete a degree program and has cost you job opportunities. It sounds like something worth working on fixing or at least working around.

I was a super shy kid and am still way on the introverted side of the spectrum. But I've learned to work on teams and to lead them. It's a skill, like any other. Much like you couldn't blame the paratroopers for rejecting you for refusing to jump out of planes, you can't really blame a school or employer for rejecting you if you refuse to learn to overcome your aversion to working with groups.

<comment><USER22> > Sorry to hear. But surely you have to agree that your introversion has > handicapped you significantly in life?

Not significantly. Yes, but which is the cause ? My personality or the standard people deems normal ? Not saying I'm normal, but maybe it's a chicken egg problem. There are tolerances and expectations at play.

Oh and by handicapped I meant like introversion is overlooked as a mental illness, like lonely people are somehow retarded.

> you can't really blame a school or employer for rejecting you if you refuse > to learn to overcome your aversion to working with groups.

I'm not blaming anybody, but at some point people have to learn about it and not just run with it like it's a standard.

Also, higher education programs should not be meant to teach people how to work with groups. How do you really expect people to learn something technical by forcing them to socialize ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The issue really comes down to society still thinking introversion is a bad thing. You are often perceived to be shy and quiet or antisocial.

Most introverts are neither of these, yet the labels persist and introversion like being left-handed was in the past is currently seen as something to be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER25> A more private and individualist education is the only reason I succeeded in life.

Before I came to the U.S, I went to South American private schools and it was a living nightmare. You breath collectivism and herd mentality is the only answer.

Because I'd refuse to work with groups, my grades were terrible and teachers often recommended my parents to seek 'special education'.

When I got in the U.S, I tested out of as many classes as possible and graduated HS at 15. If I had a talented child, I'd follow this map:

[http://image.slidesharecdn.com/gertjan-penelope- telemachos-a...](http://image.slidesharecdn.com/gertjan-penelope-telemachos- and-odysseus-141125033528-conversion-gate02/95/penelope-telemachos-and- odysseus-18-638.jpg?cb=1416886594)

</comment><comment><USER26> > "I used to think their ubiquitous earbuds were feeding their need for > stimulation; now I wonder if they're sometimes blocking out the noise."

Most of the time my earbuds are in, I'm either listening to white noise or I'm not listening to anything at all... I put them in with the intention of listening to music, but never actually get as far as remembering to put the music on - and it's exactly for that, blocking out noise. Frequently, even if I have music playing, I'm not even listening to the music, I'm just drowning out distraction so I can concentrate.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is nitpicking but, the A-level (the basement) at Regenstein library at the University of Chicago is not exactly a quiet reading area, it is typically loudest floor in the whole building.

<comment><USER28> Typically the loudest floor is the ground [first] floor...

<comment><USER27> It has been a few years since I graduated, but my impression is always that people were in general much more willing/allowed to talk in the A-level more than on any other floor.

Sure the ground floor could get packed but the amount of dBs/person was higher in the A-level, so it would it be louder if it was actually packed as well. This likely also because the A-level has the cubicles in the back that were set up precisely for group work.

In any case, it is misleading for the article to say that converting the A-level to a more collaborative environment is taking away from introverts'. Especially since the A-level is one of the louder rooms in one of the louder libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In some cases they aren't overlooked, they get suspended for being involved in a physical altercation (bully beat them up) just like any other student.

</comment><comment><USER30> Introversion/extroversion is a false dichotomy. There is no such thing, and no evidence fundamental personality types exist. Carl Jung's theories are unfalsifiable, untestable, and pseudoscientific.

Promulgating this quackery is damaging to people who are labeled as such and go on to identify with it.

<comment><USER31> I fully agree. I've seen people (including myself) go through varying degrees of introversion based on external experiences. Identification can be a strongly limiting and a destructive power. When it comes to "introvert" reservations about fully identifying with a term seem to vanish for most people - those who identify and those who do not.

<comment><USER32> > Identification can be a strongly limiting and a destructive power.

This cannot be emphasized enough. Sometimes identifying mental characteristics/behaviors can be very important (for instance, depression) in that it allows you to start examining it and trying to correct it, or build a career or social life that takes account of it. But many people latch onto non-disorder labels (like introversion) and use it to justify all their behavior ("I don't want to go out on Friday night _because I 'm an introvert_." \- spoken by many of my friends, even when going out just meant a night in playing board games that they originally suggested).

This isn't true of all introverts, but many self-identified introverts that I've met the last several years exhibit behavior more in common with burnout and depression. They hold the dual views of wanting to do things with people (their friends at least) but refusing to go out because it means dealing with people (often those same friends). At some point, like I did, you have to figure out a healthy way to deal with your desire to have quiet time/alone time/whatever time in a way that doesn't frustrate the people you want in your life to the point that they end up leaving you behind. Or you need to find friends that you actually find yourself desiring more time with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wrote a critique of group work based on my own experiences with it in school and in university, echoing many of the same grievances against voiced in this discussion:

[http://likewise.am/2015/07/01/on-communication-skills-and- pe...](http://likewise.am/2015/07/01/on-communication-skills-and-pedagogy/)

I took particular issue with the alleged wisdom of putting students of very heterogenous levels together so that the better ones can serve as a "role model".

However, my conclusion was that the best medicine is a return to more structured and - in some respects - authoritarian teaching methods centred around the lecture, not a different kind of diffuse self-motivated learning model.

</comment><comment><USER34> What I mostly remember of school is that it grossly overlooked my great need to be elsewhere, doing something else with my time. I was greatly "extroverted": oriented toward that great exterior sprawling on the other side of the classroom's window panes.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm surprised nobody mentioned people diagnosed in the autistic spectrum, because so many are attracted to engineering and computer science - I guess there are many of us lurking around here...

</comment><comment><USER31> So, is "introvert" a real thing? I feel like it's just a big group of character traits that are all gathered under an umbrella term.

<comment><USER36> From what I understand there is only one thing that constitutes as introvert and that is a person who finds social interaction draining. They aren't necessarily shy, or not outgoing or anything, but they eventually need to get away from people. Opposite from that is an extrovert who finds being alone draining and needs people to to gain that back.

<comment><USER31> Sure I've heard that definition. Yet it describes a "symptom", and not a process which it is a manifestation of. I just feel like the discussion about "introvert" is extremely shallow: here is a child, she's an "introvert". And it ends at that. We've started to use the word as a noun, but should we?

I think I used to be not introverted as a child. Then, as I experienced the pressure of moving to another country during teens, I became more introverted. And now I am not.

<comment><USER26> As someone who has "battled" introversion for much of my life, I can agree with the sentiment of the statement. I say battled because I feel like when I say I'm an introvert, people around me scoff because they feel I'm the farthest thing from an introvert. I'm happy to hold court with those who want to take part in my conversations and I strike up conversations with complete strangers on the train... I'm not particularly shy per se and I don't lack for confidence in my abilities or place in the world. But if I don't get "me time" on a daily basis, it would be like other people going without sleep. It's time to allow cognitive processing, but unlike sleep, it's conscious cognitive processing. I need this time to make sense of the world, ideas that would otherwise never be given enough thought to understand or process.

Your statement has caused me some self reflection and I think I agree. I can't say upon reflection that I am either an introvert or extrovert.

I find many types of personalities draining - as I'm sure we all do, even extroverts. I need time away from these personalities to recharge. Preferably time on my own to do my own thing, tinker, watch the world go by, but most of all think, uninterrupted or intruded upon.

There are types of people that suck energy from other people. Those that _require_ constant attention: Those that feed off your attention and will do whatever they feel they need to in order to absorb that from you. That is mentally exhausting to most of us. For me this includes people I've labelled (for better or worse) show offs - the 'look at me, don't you agree how clever/talented/awesome I am?' types.

There are also types of people that recharge you. Those that give freely of their energy, but don't require your attention. They happily send their energy your way and then let it go, content to go back to what they were doing without a need for constant reassurance or input from you. They bounce in and out of conversation, make you laugh, engage with you, but don't constantly sap your energy. Just as content to share space and not talk as they are to converse with you.

Having to be around people that constantly need or fight for your attention, always making noise, talking just to talk, interrupting your thought mid sentence; those that never appear to have any respect for the directives: If you don't have anything to say that improves upon the silence, don't say anything at all; and say as much as you can in as few words as possible.

These are the kinds of people that drain everyone... we label people who can't put up with this for very long 'Introverts' and people that _are_ this 'Extroverts' :P I say that tongue in cheek, I don't believe this is the definition of extroverts... extroverts just appear to be more immune to the energy sapping effect of this type of behavior.

In reality, I don't believe that any of us are either of these things in totality. What I do believe we are, are people with varying levels of tolerance of other people invading our personal space or mental bubble uninvited; intruding on our thought processes and spoken word with few manners or thought for those on the receiving end of that behaviour.

<comment><USER37> > I can't say upon reflection that I am either an introvert or extrovert.

Sounds like you are an ambivert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Being in a classroom full of noisy students raised my anxiety in elementary school. I wish I could ease myself in with groups instead of just being thrown in one with the most obnoxious kids. I'm in my twenties now and still dislike working in groups. I'm far more productive and mentally stress free when working in solidarity.

</comment><comment><USER39> When schools overlook introverts, they grow up and write songs like this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U) (Pink Floyd)

</comment><comment><USER40> Minor correction: The A-level at the University of Chicago is already a floor where students are allowed to speak freely.

</comment><comment><USER41> A more private DOES

</comment><comment><USER42> This is also why I'm so against the typical public school systems we've built in the US. Its a top-down beaurocratic system that does nothing but transfer wealth from the taxpayer to the teachers and their unions. Outcomes are piss poor in big cities and endless strikes for benefits and pay aren't wonderful things. Chicago is reeling from a pension crisis right now mostly due to corrupt deals with a corrupt teacher's union. A teacher's union with an average teacher's salary of $72,000 a year - for 9 months work in a very affordable city! How affordable? Our average household income is $43,000.

We need more charter schools and alternative learning either funded by the state with existing tax dollars or attached to property tax breaks for parents using them instead of the standard public school. We've been fighting for more charter schools but they come slowly because of all the pro-union politics that many liberals, unfortunately, consider unquestionable. You'd think liberals would be on the side of alternate education, especially since there's so much research on different types of children responding better to these methods.

As an introvert and somewhat of a non-standard learner, I got lucky that my parents were able to afford private school for me. I know a lot of other introverts didn't get so lucky and suffered badly in public school. Some of them are doing very poorly in life and I fully believe if they had different educations opportunities they'd be much better off. A top-down system that works only with extroverted neurotypicals is a huge disservice to children and the taxpayer.

<comment><USER43> You are extrapolating one school system to the whole US. Chicago has chosen to organize its schools that way because it is one of the more corrupt cities in the country.

<comment><USER42> I'm really not. Captive money into public school systems is asinine. That taxpayer money should be put into a pot and then handed out to different school systems like charter schools and other alternative schools, not just straight into public schools. We've had a lot of success with our charter schools even in Chicago. Vouchers for private schools would be good too.

Choice and competition work.

<comment><USER43> You're assuming everyone lives in a relatively old big city. The town I grew up in couldn't support multiple schools, and the money was pretty tightly controlled by the elected school board.

You're also not thinking of things like ELL and other services that public schools have to offer that charters often shirk.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Africa Domain Sales to Kick-Off on 04 April 2017 - tefo-mohapi http://www.iafrikan.com/2017/02/17/africa-domain-sales-to-kick-off-on-04-april-2017/ <comment><AUTHOR> Someone please give me guidance: what advantages do I gain from registering "mycompany.africa" that I cannot derive from "mycompany.org" ?</comment>


Silicon Valley's Productivity Secret - <AUTHOR> http://blog.idonethis.com/post/16736314554/silicon-valleys-productivity-secret <comment><USER2> You have to careful with this. Really really careful. The status reports can be sign of a broken company - and in a broken company they are used for politics and other gains in the worst possible way. And sometime reports will make a good company into a broken company (I saw it with my own eyes).

Furthermore, please understand that for many types of positions the snippets will not work very well because work on hard problems is then discouraged (causing low quality code).

In short, I don't think TPS reports are the key of Silicon Valley's productivity...

YMMV

</comment><comment><USER3> It's basically formalizing what happens naturally when you still have a small, physically colocated team. (Of course, most methods are.)

And like all formalizations, it's not so much the method but the people and how they deal with it that determines its success. All formal methods, no matter how lightweight, can become sheer bureaucracy if they become detached from their original intent, and I'm already seeing anecdotal evidence (including from inside Google!) in this discussion that "snippets" is no different.

It's all about communication. If your no longer deliberately communicating something _and_ getting valuable feedback, alarm bells should go off. Always keep asking "why?".

</comment><comment><USER4> I always kind of assumed that most developers who work at these Google-level places automatically reflect without a specific process to force it, but maybe I'm just projecting.

Personally, I have a hard time _stopping_ myself from reflecting on the code I've just written and the code I'm currently planning to the point where it is almost a social problem. (eg. my girlfriend will be telling me about her day and in the back of my head my brain is rewriting some code I actually wrote in an editor earlier to be simpler and more efficient... great for my productivity, bad for my relationships).

</comment><comment><USER5> We do this at Xamarin. Every employee sends an email to the entire company first thing Monday morning, containing their A&Os (Achievements and Objectives).

We're a very distributed team and A&Os are one of the ways we keep everyone in touch.

Also, doing this Monday morning is pretty important -- it means people focus on planning the upcoming week, instead of just summarizing the week that ended. Having a time every week where you set goals for yourself, and then communicate them to all your peers, seems to be pretty effective. And one benefit of having these emails go out to the whole company is that everyone can read them and comment on what people are planning, before the work starts.

</comment><comment><USER6> A missing ingredient here is that the snippet/update/whatever system needs to be policed by the CEO as the ONLY way such data can be collected. It doesn't work if eight levels of managers across three teams each decide they want the same "just five minutes per week!" updates in 16 different formats in constantly shifting docs/apps/styles.

</comment><comment><USER7> Of course they don't mention how annoying writing snippets can be (although I agree they are a good way for an individual to remember what they've done). They also don't mention that you can tell who is 'in' at Google and who isn't by the fact that they haven't written a new snippet in over a year.

<comment><USER8> Can you elaborate for those of us who aren't Googlers? Why are they annoying? If you write new snippets every week, how can you not write new snippets for a year? Is it the "in" people who haven't written new snippets for a year, or the "isn't in" people?

<comment><USER7> Sure, its pretty simple actually. Your manager says to you 'I want you to write snippets every day' and you find yourself writing silly snippets like

"Spent the morning trying to get the six people who care about serial numbers together to talk about the serial number issue, then argued with them for three hours over changing the return value of getSerialNumber to return 'None' when there was no serial number rather than 0 so that the machine database won't have several thousand machines with serial number 0. Argument against is that they will have to change their script to deal with a non-integer when the serial number doesn't exist."

Now your manager might not think that was so great, they might think you "can't get things done" because it took you all day and you didn't actually get a decision, the other 6 folks are pissed off because you slammed them in your snippet for being lazy, and you get slammed back for not being a team player. So you write a more 'friendly'

"Spent the day working on the serial number issue, not a lot of progress was made."

And now your manager complains that you are being so imprecise in your snippet that nobody can tell if you're working or slacking off. So you go looking for others who are nominally at your grade level and their snippet streams. You see either snippets like:

"Organized a summit meeting of key stake holders around our efforts to re- architect the serial number categorization issues which are have been plaguing SRE for months. Using the input received I've put together a comprehensive plan of action for addressing system wide issues."

Which is eloquently worded bullshit which makes young managers feel all happy inside but really doesn't say anything, or you see

"No snippets in the requested range, last snippet was xx/yy/zzzz (some year and a half to three years ago)."

You ask around and folks will say "Oh everyone knows what <some engineer> is up to." but you ask and say "Do you?" and they admit that no, they don't but its probably important, after all they've been here forever and they are a 'big cheese' in the system.

And of course if you point this out and it causes trouble for the 'big cheese' where it comes out that you asked their manager why they didn't seem to need to write snippets, well things would get really bad for you for a while. And its then that you note that what snippets 'are' is not at all obvious or useful.

That being said, I've always kept a note book and I write notes in it and track various projects. Its great to review and figure out what is stuck and what is making progress and it is wonderful to dump all the state into a single page or two so that I can work on a different project but 'swap back' into the stalled one just by re-reading my notes. Its exactly like keeping a lab notebook of your experiments so that when you go to write the paper all the data is right there. So I don't think snippets in general are bad, just that as a management tool they are easily abused.

<comment><USER2> This is exactly what happen in my previous company.

The story goes like this:

* one of engineers started sugarcoating his reports to look better than others

* then other engineers notice that they now look bad in eyes of the manager because they were blunt in then assessments, so they started sugarcoating their reports

* quickly the point of these reports is lost (they become garbage with no useful information about problems, challenges, what is actually done, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that the article is identifying just one little secret, and not necessarily an important one.

There is a lot of reasons why silicon valley is productive, one for all is that most people with decisional power are also expert in the field.

Certainly if you plot the percentage of managers that are competent (with possibly degrees) in the field between silicon valley companies and startup compared to all the rest of the world, I'm sure that managers or CEOs with just MBAs are less present in the Silicon Valley than in other areas.

But I still think that the main reason for the productivity in the Silicon Valley is that the people are in general good and most companies and startups aren't just dinosaurs that need $M's a year in consulting services to make any changes or improve their results.

The consulting companies themselves are dinosaurs, which is one of the reasons there is a discrete number of startups that are attempting to create new ways of performing consulting.

</comment><comment><USER10> I just read this and realized I've been misusing snippets for the eighteen months I've been at Google. There's a lesson there..

<comment><USER11> What have you been using them for then...

<comment><USER10> I've been saying what I did rather than reflecting on what is important and what to do next.

Doesn't matter because I don't think anybody's been reading them either. Most of my team doesn't use them at all.

<comment><USER12> Kinda undermines the article then.

<comment><USER13> Not necessarily... snippets can be usefull for the simple fact of organizing one's mind and week. Whether or not a manager keeps track of them, they allow the employee to personally be accountable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems that this could be misused for politics in the worst possible way since ones measure of ones performance is inherently subjective (even writing a simple 'I did X' you might omit or forget collaborations with colleagues etc).

It could be that I'm Swedish but I'm not sure I'd enjoy this at all. At our shop we do weekly retrospectives. A session about 30 minutes to end fridays with where each team sits down (about 4 ppl/team) and talk through the week and their efforts and measurable ways to improve next week and long term. This then gets logged. Fairly standard scrum/agile stuff.

Of course this shifts the focus from individual to team, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing?

</comment><comment><USER15> I really like this idea. Does anyone know of a project that implements this? I did an initial search but nothing turned up but it'd probably be easy to miss it. In a way it reminds me of Rands' trickle concept of keeping track of work done so that one's status/log is easily generated. It'd be pretty easy to link this into other sources to add details automagically as well(e.g. GitHub check-ins come to mind).

<comment><USER16> Hey, actually you can try our implementation at <http://iDoneThis.com> (author of the post here). We have a team thing we're rolling out and this post was in part to gauge interest.

<comment><USER17> Love the concept but hate the name. "iDoneThis" isn't even proper grammar...

This is a case where a few hundred dollars on a good domain name would go a long way.

<comment><USER18> It's an excellent name. It's not supposed to be proper grammar—that's part of the playfulness of it. It's not a sentence, it's a name. What you're saying is like saying 'Flickr' isn't a word.

<comment><USER19> It's a stupid name, because it also parses as a sentence, and a wrong sentence at that.

The product seems fine, but the name is irreparably bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Doing reports like this make me feel like I'm another cog in the system.

At my previous company, where we had to give a report for the 8 hours of every day, my reports were one word in length and usually the same word:

"working"

If everyone in your company has to do this what ends up happening is no one reads these so people just stop putting useful info in these "work notes".

Whats needed is communication and FEEDBACK... thats wehere most companies get it wrong.

</comment><comment><USER21> I would be hard-pressed to believe that if some company in some backwaters place just implemented snippets, then they would be as productive as engineers in Silicon Valley.

What makes Silicon Valley is the whole package. There's a critical mass of technical talent. You run into techies everywhere; a techie here feels _at home_. You (the techie) are the "in crowd". This is your bastion; your playground. You are no longer a misfit, being picked on by jocks; here, _you_ are the mainstream. This is why techies love being here, and because they're happy, they are more productive.

That's the conclusion I've come to, after 6 years here.

</comment><comment><USER22> I work at one of the companies he mentioned. We don't actually use Snippets.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting, sending daily/weekly reports is default behavior at Japanese companies (where doing busywork is actually a good thing sometimes, since it seems that there are many zombie companies that get funding just for the sake of having people employed), so I'm surprised to see this practice considered so highly in the context of the Valley. Though I'm suspicious that this practice would be a secret itself, it seems so basic that it must be written on a textbook somewhere. e.g. "give importance to communication", "it's a ritual", etc...

</comment><comment><USER24> I've always found this (daily update w/ tomorrow's plans) to be a great way to work as a contractor as well. You demonstrate that you're productive (usually much more so than employees) and future planning helps you uncover additional work to pitch to your client.

</comment><comment> dorian-graph It's done elsewhere too, at least quite similarly. Where I experienced this heavily is quite far away from technology—I was a missionary for the LDS church in the Philippines.

Every day we have a daily planning session (30mins) at night where we set goals and make plans for the next day. Once a week we have a weekly planning session (2-3hours) where we set goals and make plans for the next 7 days.

The main thing that is similar to this story is that every week we would write a letter to the mission president (Basically, someone who is in charge of all the missionaries in one area, mine being three islands in the Philippines) where we wrote down how the week went, good things, challenges, if we achieved our goals, questions and what we planned to do next week.

The planning/organisation/goal setting/GTD I learnt have stuck with me since and I still do daily/weekly planning and goal setting for work, university study, personal projects, etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> I remember Raph Koster (MMORPG designer) blogging years ago about something like this, where once a week - Sunday evenings, maybe? - he sat down with his child and made plans for what he wanted to accomplish this week. While it didn't go so far as to inform his team, it did encompass the idea of sharing it with someone else who'll help to keep you accountable.

That has even more value, perhaps, than the meta-cognition of thinking about what you need to think about.

</comment><comment><USER26> <http://Assembla.com> offers this in the form of a StandUp report which provides a simple web-based form that you fill our for what you did last day/week, what you will do today/this week, any questions or road blocks that need to be addressed.

We use them daily to ensure that everyone is working on the correct priorities and to see if anyone has any roadblocks or questions that someone on the team can help with. Some companies do them once or twice a week. Either way, its a great way to simply know who is working on what and who needs help. These standup reports are part of the Assembla workspaces but they also offer them as a free standalone tool at <http://offers.assembla.com/standup>

</comment><comment><USER27> The process of self-reflection multiplies my own motivation.

I noticed a big change in the way I work and how successful I feel after I started keeping a daily journal. My focus was not directly on productivity, but I wanted to see where my time had been going on the days where I have multi-hour lapses which seem to produce nothing.

On a typical day, I type 500 words to describe the 2 or 3 most significant moments / insights which happened that day. I also note ideas, people I meet, and more mundane things (ex. how much sleep I got) in less detail.

I write mine in the iPhone Notes app since it's already with me all the time. (I'm now designing an app which will extend the concept a step further to aggregate some of this info in more useful ways without sacrificing the convenience of one big text area for input.)

</comment><comment><USER28> At previous jobs, I've always kept a journal.txt record of what I worked on from day to day, so translating that to snippets at Google wasn't really anything new or annoying (disclaimer: I've been here about 6 months).

Personally, I think it's great to get the automated email every week with what the rest of the team has been doing, and you can setup snippet reports for other teams you collaborate with as well.

These days, I'm using DayOne (<http://dayoneapp.com>) which make it trivial to type F5 + "met with Bob about new <mumble> for the <mumble>. He said it'll be ready on Friday". Then, at the end of the week (usually on the Friday afternoon shuttle), I just read through and cherry-pick the larger items for my snippets.

</comment><comment><USER29> So _that's_ what the "S" in TPS report stands for!

</comment><comment><USER30> In all seriousness, I think if anyone took a large, systematic look at the nature of productivity gains in the Valley, they would see that the same patterns underlie their gains just like everyone else's -- Very smart people in an extremely competitive environment where many people are connected to other important thoughts and thinkers and of course using high powered ergogenic stimulants ranging from the popular and relatively innocuous coding sessions aids Adderall and Modafinil all the way to finishing months worth of a normal man's work in days with Methamphetamine (or solving deep problems in virtually every branch of mathematics and finishing it off with a Wolf Prize :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Reflection on work is an important step in getting work done efficiently, and this process forces it quite well. On top of that, it requires little action on the part of the managers.

Well done, people, well done.

</comment><comment><USER32> See also <http://www.ididwork.com> that was a YC company in 2008 I believe.

<comment><USER33> I am getting some server error when I tried to go beyond the landing page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd also like to point out that the valley has some of the best weather I've ever seen in my life. I was only down there for a few days, but every day, I felt like I needed to do something. That's a 180 from east coast weather, when it's gloomy and raining every day.

</comment><comment><USER35> OKRs started at Intel, not Google.

<comment><USER36> Google shat the bed by hiring a bunch of incompetent execs from culturally defective companies like Oracle and not telling them to wipe their fucking feet off at the door. So they tracked a bunch of shit into the place.

The rank-and-file engineers at Google are a really amazing crop of people, and the founders and early architects were (and still are) brilliant, but the middle-managers and execs hired from without are so incompetent that they are flying a plane into the company (the three-word "mission statements", that idiotic stack-ranking, the idiocy that was downslotting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've done this at every startup I've worked at, including the ones I co- founded! Didn't realize it was a novelty.

</comment><comment><USER38> Yahoo! Labs is using it too.

At the beginning I disliked it. Now at my own project I promote this technique and enjoy using it.

<comment><USER39> As a Yahoo contractor, I did this daily. Filled in a wiki page which was emailed to the project manager at a set time. I loved it, basically a public TODO list that makes your workload clearly visible.

The manager could see you were keeping productive, and you could push back on extra work if you were already 100% busy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Well-played: <http://i.imgur.com/qaPhp.png>

</comment><comment><USER41> emacs org-mode really makes this work seamlessly.

I've spent various mechanisms in the last few years trying to journal. org- mode made it work in a fairly sustainable model.

</comment><comment><USER42> I mentioned that, at my last company, we sent weekly status reports with items completed and expected upcoming tasks. I was promptly told that status reports were a sign of a broken company. Apparently, if I'd called them _snippets_ instead, I'd have been applauded for mentioning an innovative business tool?

The thing which is always overlooked in articles like this is guidance and feedback. Sending "snippets" or status reports into a black hole leads to engineers feeling isolated and disinterested (on all but the most core projects). Failing to manage engineers and set clear goals is simply poor communication.

<comment><USER43> Status reports aren't a sign of a broken company. Micro-management, over communication, and unnecessary process are.

Turns out that many broken businesses utilize status reports as a weapon of oppression. However some small tweaks, like reminders, team-level sharing, company-wide search index, and a sane managerial attitude make Snippets popular with many teams at Google.

Just like any tool, status reports can be misused. However, many non-broken businesses are fueled by them. You just might not always call it a status report.

The abstraction over these various tools is that they represent a (1) communication medium, (2) audience, (3) cadence, and (4) similar content structure.

Snippets are (1) emails, sent to (2) everyone on your team, (3) weekly, and contain (4) last week's accomplishments and this week's goals.

Standups are (1) in person meetings, (2) with the whole team, (3) daily, (4) discussing yesterday's accomplishments, today's goals, and identifying opportunities for offline collaboration.

Managerial status reports are (1) emails, (2) to your boss, sent at (3) some frequency, (4) discussing accomplishments, goals, blockers, etc.

You shouldn't do snippets because Google does them. You should figure out a communication medium, cadence, and agenda/template, which works for you and your team.

Disclaimer: I'm a co-founder of <http://www.thinkfuse.com>

Our project was in part inspired by Google's snippets (which some teams love and some teams hate; we loved them) and also inspired in part by the various enterprise-consumerization startups that are popping up left and right.

Shameless plug: We've got a much grander vision. The most common phrase we hear in meetings is "How the hell did you get me excited about status reports?" We've got top-tier investors and real traction. If you're a talented engineer in Seattle: We're hiring and would love to buy you a beer and get you excited too.

<comment><USER44> Standups don't scale though. The company I was with got to the point where morning standup took nearly an hour as each person talked about what they did yesterday, what they had planned for today, and any blockers. Worse, the only person who really needed to hear all of this was the manager. Sometimes you had interest in what another person was doing because it might impact your work, but for 90% of the standup you were just standing there, bored, waiting for your turn or waiting for it to end. Terribly unproductive.

<comment><USER45> You should have been split up into smaller teams then. 6-7 people with a max of a couple minutes per will only take 15mins.

<comment><USER46> 15 minutes? Perhaps if the shit has hit the fan and there are big problems. Our meetings take 5 normally.

<comment><USER45> Yea, it's the upper bound. We usually take about 30s each.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> OP totally misses the point about Snippet systems.

The original reason for Snippets was quite a progressive one: to remove the manager-as-SPOF anti-pattern by allowing employees to market their less- visible accomplishments internally.

That's said without comment about the _actual_ managerial environment at Google, where manager-as-SPOF is very much in force (because managers can abuse the process limitlessly to block transfers).

<comment><USER47>
        > managers can abuse the process limitlessly to block transfers

There was some eye-opening stuff about Google's promotion system here on HN yesterday:

 _Google New York is pretty 9-to-5 these days, except for people who are gunning for promotion... and it's pretty hard to build up the rolodex (due to the "2-up rule", which is that promotion from level N to N+1 will be decided by a panel of N+2's) to gun for promo every year. So most people work 9-to-5 (actually, more like 10-6:30, because of the dinner) except before a launch if they believe it will lead to promo._ [1]

I can't imagine how this works well in conjunction with the "choose your own team and product" ethos we've heard attributed to Google in the past. Maybe Google's historic growth and profitability has been masking serious issues in its talent management process.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3526263>

<comment><USER36> It was me who wrote that. My observation of Google is that, while it's not as blandly bureaucratic as a typical big company, and there isn't the mean- spirited greed of investment banks, the place is extremely _careerist_. People are laser-focused on the promotion process and the political campaigning it entails, because the ranks really matter, and not just in terms of compensation, but how much respect you get within the organization and how much say you have in what you work on. You aren't a Real Googler until a certain point on the promotion ladder, and the Real Googler Line keeps rising: it used to be Senior, but it's shifting over to Staff (the level above Senior). You can be a Real Googler at Senior, but only if you have it "locked in" be Staff in a year or two. If there's a sense that you may have plateaued at Senior, you're not a Real Googler.

 _I can't imagine how this works well in conjunction with the "choose your own team and product" ethos_

Yeah, that's not true anymore. Google has a lot of icky maintenance work that has to be delegated somehow. Not only do you not get to choose your project for the first 18 months, but you don't know what it is coming in the door. This is one area where Google plays the diva card hard: you have to accept the job without knowing your project. You might get something interesting. You might not. More likely, it's the latter.

You can transfer after 18 months, but there's also a "permission paradox" effect; if you haven't worked on good projects, you have a really hard time moving to a good project because you're competing (for transfers) against people who've worked on more exciting and more visible stuff than you have.

A couple other marketing pitches that don't hold up: 20% time is dead. People get fucked over in "Perf" if they're perceived as actually caring about a 20%-time project. Finally, Google markets itself as a "C++, Java, and Python shop" when Python is pretty close to deprecated in production so it's mostly C++ (yes, C++; I am absolutely not making this shit up) and Java. Python gets a lot of use by managers who still want to code and need a real language because they can only commit 1/3 of their time to software, but almost all of the important projects get rewritten in C++.

The other thing I'd say about Google is that the company is extremely good at collecting talent (they have it down to a science, and their recruiters are some of the best in the business) and very bad at managing it, as you alluded. There used to be a morale-destroying process called "slotting": you'd start out at a "mezzanine" between two levels on the engineer ladder. You'd be given a job offer (and paid) as an N+1 but actually be "between levels" and you'd have about a 70% chance of dropping to N when you were slotted a year later. (Some people got double-downslotted, which was the kiss of death.) The result was a system that pissed everyone off. If you worked hard, beat the odds, and got upslotted, you didn't get a bonus-- you just got the job title you were promised. If you were downslotted, you now had a crappy job title compared to what you were promised in your job offer letter, and you wouldn't get raises for a long time on account of being "overpaid" for your level. It was a morale disaster, and thankfully they got rid of that idiocy, but a process like that makes you wonder how such an obviously shitty idea got in the door in the first place.

Career progress at Google is also ungodly slow. The promo rate is something like 10-20%/year (i.e. each "level" represents about 5-10 years of average- case work). The slow progress actually makes sense when you look at what Google is. Most of the work is legacy maintenance in C++, so unless you kill the lottery and get the best projects, you're likely to end up on things where you don't learn much and don't really _deserve_ faster promotions.

<comment><USER48> Ah so everyone spends all the time gaming the system sounds just like the PRP process at BT - Though I suspect its more from Google's blindness to reality and social skills than HR capturing the system for their own ends to the detriment of the other stakeholders.

Though 10-20% was heaven compared to BT there used to be 20 or 25 promotions every 18 months in systems engineering (and that Division had more far more developers than Google has staff)

Even getting on the short list for a board was a major achivement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


At what time will be the YC W17 invites/rejection emails sent? - <AUTHOR> We submited our application at the last moment .So when we night get the email? <comment><USER2> Last batch, it took them a little over two weeks to submit their e-mails, some people had to wait longer (maybe the last-moment applications).

I applied on March 25th and received the rejection e-mail on April 11th.

So keep working and try not to worry for a couple of weeks :) . Good luck.</comment>


Cofounder Search (in Bay Area) - <AUTHOR>

I am in search for a cofounder with the following qualities:
i) clearly communicate their motivation for doing a startup (because i've learned from the past that only rock-solid motivation can endure the challenges)
ii) clearly communicate what types of business models scale, what types DON'T scale, and why.
iii) naturally inclined to see large problems that need to be solved in multi-billion dollar industries.
iv) clearly communicate what their weaknesses are. and then their strengths. (because weaknesses are harder, it goes first)
a little background about me related to entrepreneurship experience:
i) software engineer who has founded a consulting company (quickly realized it does not scale) and co-founded a social-dating company (realized the lesson of being selective with partners as not every smart guy has the motivation for starting & scaling a business)
ii) i am currently focused on the mobile space and have 2 software engineers (staffed) developing a mobile solution for the iphone. The target customer is the online publishing industry.
iii) Weakness - Ability to identify large problems that need to be solved in the market. Strength - Solving the problem and rapidly delivering the solution.
If you feel you would be a great fit as a cofounder, feel free to drop me a line at email@example.com. <comment><USER2> Is the product already sold to a client/validated or are you still testing the market?

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you primarily looking for a technical cofounder?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> no. primarily looking for someone with a big vision and solid motivation to deliver on the vision.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> testing the market.</comment>


Is Microsoft Teams Coming of Age? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/capgemini-dynamics-365-team/is-microsoft-teams-coming-of-age-b819a45f9759 <comment><USER2> From the article: this is why I can't use MSTeams despite being an Office 365 subscriber:

> Another significant concern appears when organisations have more than 1 O365 > tenant, often due to the result of acquisitions and mergers, inheriting > additional O365 tenants, and users from each original organisation still > using different tenants. Teams requires the user to login to a single tenant > and can work in that tenant only.

> Although it is possible to have the users guested into the other tenant, and > then they can switch tenants within the Teams user interface, so that they > can collaborate with users in the other organisation, this is far from ideal > as the user must actively switch between tenants before they will receive > any notifications from that tenant, and cannot collaborate in 2 teams from > different tenants concurrently. Also switching tenants can easily take 15–20 > seconds to complete, so switching back and forth feels cumbersome too.

I'm a member of 5 different Slack tenants, 2 of which are free/open tenants (think: open-source projects). While Slack isn't ideal (switching tenants in the desktop Electron app takes about 1-3 seconds) in Teams it will likely never happen because it's counter to the Office 365 business model (I don't want to be a "guest", I want to be a first-class user in multiple tenants simultaneously - I need it for my work!)</comment>


Dropbox acquires Hackpad (YC W12) - <AUTHOR> https://hackpad.com/Hackpad-is-teaming-up-with-Dropbox-m1Fne5A6Lzn <comment><USER2> Just a little side note. I really wish people would give an overview of what their service is or does in press releases like this. Quite often, I see 'Facebook bought x' or 'Dropbox bought y' and I click to see what it is, and if I would want to use it. More often than not, there's no little blurb that lets me know what their product even does.

<comment><USER3> Could anyone tell me what it is? Even the test drive link on their home page offers no clues without signing up, and the blog isn't responding.

<comment><USER4> Sort of a hybrid of Google Docs and a wiki. Example from a recent hackathon: [https://hackpad.com/Dataset-Wish-List- MeMfcb91BLL](https://hackpad.com/Dataset-Wish-List-MeMfcb91BLL)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this makes a lot of sense for Dropbox. Documents are moving online, which means people won't need Dropbox for them.

I have a half-written blog post from months ago on why Dropbox should by Quip for this reason - they should be trying to leapfrog Google Docs to stay competitive.

Best of luck to the team!

<comment><USER6> Box made the Writely founder VP Eng for precisely this reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite parts of Hackpad were the features that weren't intended to have mass-market appeal (ex: code syntax highlighting, markdown-inspired keybindings, ability to easily create/delete accounts). These will likely be gone in whatever notes product that Dropbox makes with the help of the (wonderful) Hackpad team.

So for me, this acquisition seems like a loss. I realize that Hackpad has said that they'll keep the site alive, but I expect it to be less functional if everyone maintaining it is a full-time Dropbox employee now. Fingers crossed that there will someday exist a good collaborative doc editor for hackers that doesn't fall over when >10 people connect or require a Google account!

Full disclosure: I have written code and done security auditing for Hackpad. I tried to get them to add vim mode. :)

<comment><USER8> Have you tried Etherpad? I'm pretty sure it supports both markdown and syntax highlighting.

<comment><USER7> I'm aware that there's modules you can add to do those things. Are there public instances that have those installed? It's been a while since I used Piratepad et al.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of those 'no brainer' moves, glad to see it got done. Love the irony of a YC exit as an acquisition by a YC company :-) Congratulations, hackpad is an awesome product and the combination with Dropbox has excellent potential.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Love the irony of a YC exit as an acquisition by a YC company :-)

Honest question, why is that irony?

<comment><USER9> Fair question, perhaps recursion? I could imagine an unscrupulous person creating the 'mega-startup-accellerator' and having as its first round a startup they fund which is required to acquire half the startups of each subsequent round. Thus creating the worlds most successful startup accelerator where nearly half the companies are guaranteed to have an "exit".

In this case it is more like having the kids grow up and being successful than anything nefarious. And YC gets to put 'acquired Apr '14' in the box of outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Acquihires are pretty much the default hiring method these days, so "victory" now requires keeping the product active after acquisition.

A toast, then, to Hackpad. Well done.

<comment><USER11> Is the human capital pool really that tight in the Valley?

<comment><USER12> Given that a 2br apartment is $8000/month in some places, yeah.

<comment><USER11> Am I the only one that immediately sees that as a sign of 'Maybe people should setup satellite offices and stop recruiting in the Valley due to costs'?

<comment><USER13> Is remote work a viable option?

<comment><USER14> It's not remote if it's a satellite office. Hire 3-6 people, rent a space, slap a sign on the door, it's now "Dropbox Pennsylvania" or whatever.

<comment><USER15> Is there convincing evidence that such approach works?

There were articles that Google's employees in satellite offices were alienated due to perceived lack of power over decisions, power struggles with the mothership (Mountain View engineers would schedule meetings at a time that's convenient to them, forcing their foreign office to be online at ungodly hours), and project visibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is an exceptional deal. The hackpad team is awesome, the product makes sense, and I remember thinking after Box bought Crocodoc, that Hackpad would make sense as part of Dropbox, especially as it went enterprise and started competing with Word, Google Docs etc.

Congrats to the Hackpad team and to Dropbox here. Solid deal.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hackpad is pretty awesome. Glad it will still be running after the acquisition. Congrats Alex & Igor

</comment><comment><USER18> Ugh, Etherpad shoulda been copyleft. Hackpad is a travesty for being so non- transparent that they're just a tweak of Etherpad.

<comment><USER19> I've only seen HackPad and my impression is it was built upon Etherpad. Someone confirm that? I don't want to sign up a new account just to find out.

<comment><USER18> That was my point. Hackpad _is_ Etherpad and people should use Etherpad more instead _and_ work to improve it so we have better free software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Congrats Alex and Igore, Hackpad is really impressive. Great move by Dropbox.

What's the state of the opensource alternatives? Etherpad development seems to have plateaued a while ago.

<comment><USER21> What features are missing in Etherpad for you?

<comment><USER20> The ones Hackpad added :)

And, raw Etherpad has a lot of usability problems as well. Plus it's challenging to integrate it with an outside authentication mechanism.

I've looked at the code some and while on the one hand this could all be added, it's a clunky base. Node's come a long way since etherpad lite started.

<comment><USER7> Hackpad is an Etherpad fork, so you might conclude that someone has already done the work of wrangling Etherpade code and making those patches. ;)

<comment><USER20> Very true! It's not like it defies the laws of physics ... but, it also shows how much effort is needed to get to something with hackpad's usability on the etherpad core: years worth of work from very smart devs.

If collaborative editing were the main focus of what I was working on, I'd say "yay, market opportunity!" But as it is, I just want to be able to plug in (and contribute to) a good open-source option. Which may wind up being Etherpad, but I'd like to do better ...

<comment><USER7> maybe the hackpad creators will open-source and/or release upstream patches to etherpad! _cough_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We love Hackpad at Rollbar. Congrats guys, keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER23> Please don't shut it down, like Readmill. I use Hackpad daily, and I'd hate to see it go by the way of Readmill and shoved down the toilet.

</comment><comment><USER24> DropBox looks like the company that walks on four legs, then two, then three. First, it was just a smart choice to replace emailing yourself files. Pretty soon, it will be an IBM, where some sales guy will convince your boss that the DropBox Q1000 is what your business needs for synergy and you'll end up having to use it.

</comment><comment> UVB-76 This is how it was always going to go.

Dropbox's core business is unsustainable, and they can't compete long-term with rivals like Google and Apple.

They're flailing in all directions at the moment; pushing for the enterprise/government market with the appointment of Condoleezza Rice, now burning a load of money acquiring businesses offering tangential services, in the hope they can diversify their business model.

It won't work. Acquisitions like this never go to plan, and they are almost always a waste of money.

<comment><USER14> I still don't get why DB hasn't come up with a business model to let people just self-host content out of their accounts. They basically offer an instant web-server experience for non-tech folks, but they cap bandwidth for downloads.

\- How awesome would it be if I could dump a bunch of mp3 files and an html page or index file or something, get a URL from the service and suddenly my band has a website. Then if I go to www.dropbox.com under some "music" category see my band listed there next to a bunch of other bands. Voila, instant promotion. Now the entire independent music industry has a promotion venue. Setup some kind of friendly payment processor and now bands can sell their music direct. (and oh yeah, you get automagic copyright protection since they can scan all other user's accounts for illegal copies of your music).

\- How about letting my Dad dump some word documents in a folder called Chapter 01.docx Chapter 02.docx etc. get a URL and people can come check out his book's site with automatic conversion to various ebook formats (and a payment processor to handle the transactions)?

\- Or in my "podcasts" directory dump an mp3 of my latest podcast and have it automatically publish out to iTunes and various other podcast search engines?

\- Completely annihilate flickr and other services by letting me dump a bunch of photos into a folder, get an admin URL so I can type up descriptions and other metadata (and geolocate stuff on a map) and a publish URL to give out to people. Let me do that with with both a personal folder and a "pro" folder. Let people go to my publish URL and buy photos from me (auto watermarked by DB) or partner with a photo print service so people can buy prints at various sizes.

the list goes on and on and on and I'd bet people would pay a little money to be able to do some of this. It seems so obvious and the little bit that DB supports (like photo albums) is so lackluster its almost not worth using. It would get people to start filling their spaces up with stuff further upselling them on the need to buy more space. With a little finagling they could even wrap a social network on top of all this content and back door into Facebook's space.

I just don't get it.

<comment><USER25> Their other acquisition today - Loom - is on the annihilate Flickr path.

I must say I do like your auto monetization angle though. If carousel is anything to go by, their 'we build UX ontop of your content' execution is so far a bit meh.

Trouble is, as Twitter showed, there's no long term joy in building a competitor to a service using its API.

<comment><USER14> Well they had/have a huge opportunity to start an entire series of cottage industries like this but have completely failed to grab onto the idea. It seems like a pretty obvious extension of the "put a bunch of files in the cloud and sync" notion to me. After all, what's an app server but a bunch of program files stuck on a server drive?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is the landing page terribly jittery for anyone else? I can barely tell what's going on and scrolling takes a bit to respond.

<comment><USER7> It is often like that in Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well this is not very promissing: [http://i.imgur.com/1vCvZzI.png](http://i.imgur.com/1vCvZzI.png)

</comment><comment><USER28> Hackpad and Loom? Dropbox is on a bit of a feeding frenzy.

<comment><USER29> They are prepping for an IPO.

(note - for anyone not familiar, a common strategy just before an IPO is to cash out on a large chunk of capital so as to sweeten the deal for the much larger public capital raise)

<comment><USER15> Mmm, how does having less capital on hand benefit the company that's approaching public markets for financing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> hahahaha ctl-f for "journey"

</comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like redirection for the Condoleezza Rice fallout.

<comment><USER31> do downvoters have anything to add? I think it's a valid comment given the timing of these acquisitions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hackpad seems down at the moment. Wouldn't trust them with my documents.

<comment><USER33> Snarky comment aside, we've used them for many months and have had a fantastic experience on it. Great for collaboration is significantly better than Google docs/e-mails.

<comment><USER34> Can you explain why it's better then Google Docs? I've never heard of Hackpad before, but from their front page, it seems like it fills exactly the same space as Google Docs (collaborative, real-time editing), with little information about why they're better.

<comment><USER7> They don't do a great job of advertising why they're better, but semi-sensible keybindings (similar to Github markdown) and code syntax highlighting sold it for me. Also doesn't require a Google account to use.

Also auto-embeds photos/videos/soundcloud when you paste in links and has prettier UI. Not sure if Google does the former.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


EFF Has Lavabit's Back in Contempt of Court Appeal - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-has-lavabits-back-contempt-court-appeal

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that the two strongest _practical_ arguments EFF is making (based on how people will react to an adverse decision) are also the two that probably the least persuasive from a legal standpoint (based on laws and court precedents).

I'm talking about service providers moving their operations to more privacy- friendly jurisdictions, and improving protocols with e.g. perfect forward secrecy to make this sort of attack impractical.

So everyone suffers under an adverse decision in this case:

The US economy suffers because businesses seriously concerned about privacy choose to locate elsewhere

Law enforcement suffers because those businesses are no longer reachable when they have a legitimate reason to obtain the communications of spies, terrorists, or plain old criminals, and get a narrow warrant that properly protects the privacy of innocent bystanders.

Individual liberty suffers because a precedent will make it easier for people who don't care about privacy and use domestic providers subject to these overbroad warrants to be caught up in a surveillance dragnet

That being said, Congress, not the courts, is the proper venue to address those practical arguments. Will anyone care outside of technophile bubbles like HN? Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bravo, EFF.

Seriously, that is one heck of a broad warrant, namely the private key used to decrypt all business records of all customers.

<comment><USER4> The warrant was specifically for the data relating to Mr Snowden. Go and read the disclosed documents: that is the only individual on whom data was requested.

There was no warrant for the SSL keys; that was issued as a subpoena when Mr Levison stated that the data-in-transit was encrypted. The judge told him to disclose the keys that were protecting Mr Snowden's data.

That Mr Levison happened to use the same SSL certs for _all_ paying customers isn't the fault of anyone but... him.

<comment><USER5> That is how SSL is intended to work. You cannot have more than one SSL certificate for a given domain. That is an intentional design decision by the committee that created the SSL RFC.

Does the door to your house support multiple types of keys? Or is it designed to work with a single, specifically machined key? Can you open your front door with your car key? Why not?

<comment><USER6> Why is one SSL key the only thing protecting these customers?

<comment><USER5> Because that is how SSL works. I don't understand your question. Your bank uses one SSL key as well. Google has one SSL key for their homepage. It is not possible for a top level domain to have more than one SSL certificate. Are you asking why SSL works the way it does? You'll have to talk to the people who wrote the RFC.

SSL is what is used to protect communications between a client and the Lavabit endpoint. Once a request is inside the lavabit network other security measures are used. For example, each email message is signed using the account key for a given member, the account key is itself encrypted with the members password. The only way to decrypt a message is with the account key and the only way to decrypt the account key is with the member password. If you lose your password, your mail is gone forever. The feds had access to snowdens encrypted emails, but they had no way to decrypt them without his account password and the only way to do that is with snowdens personal password, which is why they wanted to sniff unencrypted traffic (to snag his password en route to the lavabit server). I've simplified a few things but this is a rough overview of how his system is designed.

<comment><USER6> Why is SSL the only thing protecting these customers? It's a really simple question and I think you are intentionally avoiding it and attacking a straw man.

<comment><USER7> The entire second paragraph addresses the internal security beyond the SSL protection used in transit. But yes, in effect, SSL is the only thing protecting the user's password on the wire and this password is what is used to generate the master key for the encrypting the messages server side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And there is still doubt we live in a police state?

<comment><USER2> At least the issue is being discussed in public and litigated in the courts.

<comment><USER3> It was litigated in the courts in the USSR too. Not so much discussed in public but I am not sure that matters.

The whole issue of making such a taboo topic is that it makes it hard for opposition to mobilize. However in the US we have other ways of doing that. Hyperpartisanship is something which has a remarkably similar effect while at the same time allowing us to say with a straight face that we are not a police state.....

<comment><USER9> I'm afraid this is what you get when you architect your political system to institutionalize gerrymandering. I suspect that hyperpartisanship, and the thorough political dysfunction we're seeing over in the US at the moment, is pretty much an unavoidable consequence of developing very stable partisan electoral ghettos.

In the UK such gerrymandering is taken very seriously because it's a fundamental attack on the integrity of the electoral system. People found guilty of it have had their political and personal lives ruined, and quite rightly too. But in the US it's standard practice. I don't think this is taken seriously enough.

<comment><USER3> The UK has had bad experiences with gerrymandering too, right? I am remembering the term "pocket borough."

<comment><USER10> Yes but we reformed those in 1832! I sometimes think the US politics is still stuck in the 18th century.

<comment><USER3> Of course, the only reason I knew the term is:

"I grew so rich that I was sent

By a pocket borough into Parliament

I always voted my party's call

And I never thought of thinking for myself at all!

...

I thought so little, the rewarded me

By making me the ruler of the Queen's Navee!"

\-- Arthur Sullivan, from "The HMS Pinnafore"

The scary thing is how well that verse describes American politics these days..... So maybe you are right....

<comment><USER11> I think this is the first time I've seen Gilbert and Sullivan quoted on HN. Bravo, sir. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> nice one, EFF--you guys are bad ass. EFF has of course also for the past decade, been a relentless warrior against Patent Trolls. i don't know, but i would be willing to bet, that the new troll-killing bill is in part due to their efforts as well.

<comment><USER13> EFF is a pointless figurehead that does none of it's own work. It simply coopts ongoing legal action and puts their name on it anyway they can. This is a pointless case, like the EFF can fix https by this case? No, the cat is already out of the bag. https has been broken for some time, first by cyber criminals and businesses being stupid, and then the NSA trying to keep up with the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, how does one fight a contempt of court? Is it even possible?

(PS: Great job EFF!)

<comment><USER15> I'm guessing it involves appealing (or similar) the court order that the contempt finding depends on.

<comment><USER16> Yes. Lavabit's filing [0] is to the Fourth District Court of Appeals. Page 1 of their brief (after all of the disclosures and tables of content) explains the jurisdictional stuff pretty well.

0: [pdf] [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/gov.us...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/gov.uscourts.ca4_.13-4625.26.0.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Glad the EFF is joining.

For background, Lavabit filed their appeal a few weeks ago [0]. Ars covered it [1], and it was discussed here on HN [2] as well.

0: [pdf] [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/gov.us...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/gov.uscourts.ca4_.13-4625.26.0.pdf)

1: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/lavabits- appeal-w...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/lavabits-appeal-were- actually-not-required-to-wiretap-our-own-users/)

2: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6531814](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6531814)

</comment><comment><USER17> Why did Levison have access to their users mails in the first place? Didn't they claim that only you can see your emails? Isn't that the reason you can't reset your password?

<comment><USER18> Because email is an insecure protocol. The email comes in unencrypted from the sender's SMTP server.</comment></comment>


The Myth of the Open Source Business Model - <AUTHOR> http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/12/27/TheMythOfTheOpenSourceBusinessModel.aspx

<comment><USER2> _Either way, the developers of World of Goo are still screwed._

"Screwed" relative to what? The cloud-cuckoo-land business model where they have the same development and distribution costs and the same marketing effectiveness but a 0% piracy rate? _That plan only works in your imagination._

Seems to me that the _World of Goo_ developers might be doing pretty well by their business model. They've got 10% of their users paying $15. If they'd made an iPhone app 100% of their users would be paying something... but how much smaller is the universe of users, and would they have built as big an audience in that universe if they had charged $15 for a game? Here's something claiming to be a bestseller list:

<http://thumblounge.com/topapps/>

SimCity for iPhone seems to be pulling in $10 a unit... but SimCity is a legendary existing brand with no marketing problems. Somewhat obscurer games -- which nonetheless have pretty well-known existing brands -- are Enigmo and Bejeweled, which are charging $2 each. So: much less revenue per user, smaller potential universe of users, but a much lower piracy rate. Does it pay off? Should _every_ new game be exclusive to the iPhone, now?

Now factor in this: Which game developers are now in a great position to get some big game company to sign a contract for the Wii, PS3, or XBox rights -- or to _port_ their game to iPhone and leverage their piracy-built brand to get lots of people to pay $4.99 to play it again? Is it worth allowing pirates to copy your game onto half the machines in the world if _one_ of those machines happens to be sitting near a manager at Electronic Arts?

I don't know the answers to these questions. But they would be interesting to explore. Without doing so, sitting around and complaining about the "unfairness" of a 90% piracy rate is just an unenlightening fantasy exercise, like imagining how much better you could fight if you were Colossus from the X-Men.

</comment><comment><USER3> "For developers of shrinkwrapped software, Open Source only turns piracy from a problem into a benefit if you're willing to forego building consumer software and you have software that is either too complicated to use without handholding"

I've worked in the largest bank & largest telco in a country, and the largest hedge fund in the world. All three paid substantial licenses to Red Hat. In no case was that license paid for hand holding. Either my experiences over the last decade are completely unusual or the author is talking out of his ass.

"OR you can scare a large percentage of your customers into buying traditional software licenses by using the GPL instead of the BSDL."

How does the GPL scare customers in a way that the BSDL does not? This is a big claim to make without supporting arguments.

That the author doesn't seem to be bothered to spell 'Red Hat' correctly points in the same direction as the other two points. This article is trash.

<comment><USER4> "How does the GPL scare customers in a way that the BSDL does not? This is a big claim to make without supporting arguments."

That's easy to support. The GPL wing of the free software movement is famous for being unreasonably prone to solving conflicts with litigation. They are also famous for going to extreme lengths to dig up evidence that somebody is committing a 'crime' against their licensing ideology.

The academic license community (BSD, MIT, etc) on the other hand rarely if ever enforce their licenses in any formal way. They especially don't end up in court over it!

<comment><USER3> You are provably wrong on every point you just made.

1\. The GPL is not a wing of a movement. It is a license.

2\. The license isn't an ideology, it's an agreement willingly entered into by people who wish to use the FSF's copywritten creations. If people don't wish to use the FSF's copywritten creations, they do not have to license the software.

3\. The majority of conflicts have been resolved without litigation - in fact you'll find the FSF has only recently litigated a company for the first time ever, despite existing for a couple of decades. Even in that case (Cisco Systems), this was after years of attempting to negotiate out of court.

BSD and MIT licenses have only provided a wealth of 'do what you want' source code with a license requiring little more than attribution. The major beneficiaries of BSD licenses have been Sun, Microsoft, and NetApp. If BSD licensing were a successful basis for growing software, every startup wouldn't be running on Linux, as Linux wouldn't exist. But it isn't, so they nearly always are.

In short: grow up hippy, I ain't giving you source code for free.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacking iOS 8 Interactive Push Notifications with Emojis - <AUTHOR> https://hall.com/blog/hacking-ios-8-interactive-push-notifications-with-emojis/ <comment><USER2> This is a really cool way around the limitations of iOS. When Facebook added thumbs up to Messenger for android it was awesome so I imagine that Hall is trying to emulate that for business.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you'd like to see an emoji other than the thumbs up, send me a note at firstname.lastname@example.com to get in our beta.</comment>


Ruby Warrior - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloc.io/ruby-warrior

<comment><USER2> It's very annoying when a website blasts out music without user consent as soon as it loads. This is a case in point.

<comment><USER3> from the website it looks like a UX/frontend courses company, I don't know how they plan to get good feedbacks with that</comment></comment>


An apartment on Central Park just sold for $238M - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/24/business/most-expensive-home-in-the-us-sells-for-238-million-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> Same guy (Ken Griffin) just spent £95 million on a London "Georgian mansion within sight of Buckingham Palace": [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/21/us-hedge- fund-t...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/21/us-hedge-fund- tycoon-95m-house-ken-griffin-london-uk)</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a reliable way to sandbox untrusted code? - <AUTHOR>

I'm designing on an application which involves running untrusted code.  The untrusted code does not need to make any system calls, just take a string as input and return a string as output.  There aren't any real constraints at this stage on the form in which the code should be provided.  Source code, byte code or binaries would all be OK.<p>Are there any ways to do this securely, at the moment?  NaCl is intriguing, but there hasn't been much incentive to break it yet.  Java and Javascript sandboxes have probably been pounded on the hardest, but privilege escalation exploits for them do show up from time to time.  Are there any other sandboxes I should be looking at?  Is attempting to securely run untrusted code just a foolhardy enterprise? <comment><USER2> What is your actual security model?

Here is a simple solution: have a single machine running a web app ("paste your code here") and one or more sandboxes (physical machines running off CD- ROM/NFS/anything nonwritable). On submission, the web server sends the code to one of the sandboxes, which compiles and executes it and returns any output (SSH seems convenient for this). Any other network access to/from the sandboxes is blocked. If one of the sandboxes stops accepting connections or otherwise misbehaves, reboot it.

This doesn't isolate the untrusted programs from each other. Sufficiently nasty code may be able to persist across reboots by nestling in firmware, but that does not pose an additional security problem. This setup is trivial to DoS, but it's simple and doesn't rely on, say, the Linux kernel being secure from local attacks - you just need a properly-configured firewall, e.g. on the web host ("drop all packets to/from sandboxes except locally-initiated SSH connections").

</comment><comment><USER3> Lua's sandboxes are very lightweight, if the untrusted code could be pure Lua:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1224708/how-can-i- create-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1224708/how-can-i-create-a- secure-lua-sandbox)

You can do the same in any interpreted language that allows you to specify the environment to eval calls.

</comment><comment><USER4> Libcapsicum, userns in Linux (although that isn't really sand boxing in the sense of libcapsicum). If you want 100% sanboxing without any form of exploitability you're either looking at a capability based operating system (probably with managed code) or use layers up on layers up on.. With KVM and such

</comment><comment><USER5> This is done a lot. Check out Chroot jails.</comment>