Pepper the Pigs - <AUTHOR> https://www.pepperthepigs.com

<comment><USER2> I'm in favor of self-defense -- but buying a can of pepper spray and keeping it in your purse, pocket, glove box, whatever and never training with it is not likely to be a significant benefit in event of an attack. More likely, it will harm you more than it helps.

a) If you've never sprayed it before, how do you know how far it goes, the spray pattern, how much pressure it takes to depress the button, how long it lasts?

b) pepper spray is indiscriminate - it _will_ get on you, and if you're not ready for that, it's very possible that you will find yourself completely helpless, eyes burning, coughing, gasping for breath - all while being attacked.

This is why law enforcement and the military, before they leave "basic training", are exposed to a wide variety of agents they expect to meet in the field, including pepper spray (I went through pepper spray training. Very eye opening {or closing!} to say the least).

If you are carrying pepper spray, you owe it to yourself to get proper training that includes being sprayed with it in the face and how to still defend yourself while under the effects. Otherwise, it's just a potentially deadly talisman.

<http://www.aaa-safetyfirst.com/pepper-spray-reaction.htm> [http://www.safariland.com/blog/post/OC-Spray-Training-To- Be-...](http://www.safariland.com/blog/post/OC-Spray-Training-To-Be-or-Not-to- Be-Sprayed.aspx)

<comment><USER3> Having worked in law enforcement, pepper spray is misery. Everyone in the area gets some exposure, it burns for like 45 minutes at least, it clings to skin and hair and clothes (and police car seats) and you don't realize it until your eyes are burning again the next day because you scratched a crevise of your ear and then later rubbed your eye. Forget wearing contacts for a day or two. If you get maced (Other irritants gasses besides the pepper spray) all of your mucus membrane decide the drain all fluids possible and you're coughing up a storm.

Really, just hope you get tazed instead. Hurts a little more but it's over _so_ much quicker. Or, if possible, avoid physical confrontations with the police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I support the overall idea, the name "Pepper the Pigs" is going to be very confusing in the USA- 'pigs' is a slang term for a policeman, so my immediate association was that you want to pepperspray police officers.

<comment><USER5> Peppa Pig is also a popular children's cartoon series in the UK.

<comment><USER4> Ha, yes. I'm an ex-pat in America and my first thought was "some tie-in for that show that the bloke from the Chris Moyles show is in".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure pepper spray gets to the heart of the issue. We're talking about something much more ingrained in the culture than simple predators lurking in some alley, no? Do you have any idea what could happen to a woman that pepper sprays the wrong man in some parts of the world? We're talking about a place that still has thousands of cases of bride burning each year (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_burning#In_India>). Not sure how pepper spray is the first step here.

<comment><USER7> Exactly, this feels like a bandaid on a gaping wound. If we are going to spend our energies, it should be for education/legal change....or getting at the hearts/minds of the Indian people. The international Justice mission is a great team of lawyers who fight for such change.

<http://www.ijm.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think I've heard self defense experts recommend against pepper spray. Not sure why - perhaps fumbling around for it in your purse wastes too much valuable time, and there is the danger of hurting yourself instead of the attacker?

In any case it seems very naive to me to think the problem could be solved in such a way. I certainly don't think it is because of pepper spray that we presumably have less rape incidents in the western world.

<comment><USER9> What's your proposed "non-naive" solution? (And does it leave a window of decades in some places before it can be feasibly implemented in India, where vast swathes of the country are still third-world?)

<comment><USER10> Here it is, Rape-aXe: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9guyVVqHcYo It can be made for cheap and there is demand for it.

<comment><USER11> While it's well meaning, that really doesn't sound like a solution.

On the purely practical front: you will never get enough woman wear them. The most you could hope for is enough woman wearing them so that they have a deterrent effect on would-be rapists. But if enough people hear about them, and the rapists know to expect them, what's to stop the rapist from simply removing it? I would also expect that if the condom functioned as expected, it would mostly just serve to enrage the rapist and make it more likely for him to escalate the level of violence.

On a more emotional level: the woman still gets raped. What's more, she has to ritually insert an object that only works if she does get raped. I can't imagine that being good for one's psyche.

Which is not to say we shouldn't search for interesting solutions wherever we can find them. But I'm very skeptical that some gadget is going to solve this problem.

Protesting and agitating for social change is probably the most effective route that's available right now. And these women are kind of amazing, though vigilanteism always raises tough questions: [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/02/26/meet-the- wo...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/02/26/meet-the-woman-behind- indias-pink-vigilantes.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pepper sprays are considered as offensive WEAPONS in some countries and their possession might be illegal.

<comment><USER12> This site is specific to India, and a quick search shows that pepper spray is legal in India. What is the point of your comment?

<comment><USER10> What is the point of asking me what the point is? OK, if it's legal in India then it's a good initiative. But I wish more was being done worldwide to educate men that women aren't their playthings.

<comment><USER12> To 1) see if I might have missed something and 2) passive-aggressively point out that your comment was off the mark.

<comment><USER10> The aggressive part of your passivity is uncalled for. The point of a forum like HN is discussion. Some post, others respond. Even though mistakes are made. That's the whole point of society.

Keep cool man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Two problems (IMO):

A. I understand that this is an inspired act sparked by the very recent events in India...but more explanation needs to be visible in order to make this organization seem legit. I'm not talking about showing us your registration and non-profit organization permit, I mean "Kickstarter Pitch" level: I'm just giving my money to who now (listing a few organizations isn't enough, I need names of reps to at least be assured you're just not misappropriating their name)? How is it being spent? What is the purchasing price that you're using? What are your plans for transparency (i.e. a weekly/monthly report on how many sprays have been given out).

I realize that last bit may be hard because you're not at that volume-of- action yet...but this could be slightly mitigated by either securing a decent donation from a group/benefactor or the organizers themselves making the initial sizable donation. Yes I guess that sounds a bit entitled ("why can't you build the distribution site AND purchase the supplies") but if your call to action is going to berate people for just sitting around on Facebook...well, you kind of put yourself in the position to set an example, right?

B) The "Buy a pepper spray" graph just reeks of "white knight syndrome":

> _A can costs Rs. 400. Have enough money to buy one? Do it. If you are a > dude, buy one for your sister, your partner and every girl you care about > (which should be every girl you know)._

What if you are not a "dude"? Just hope that, as a female, someone will purchase pepper sprays for your sister, partner, etc.? Also, not all affected by the rape problem are girls. Some of them, including the victim at the most currently famous case, are women. And that last sentence parenthetical is just patronizing and redundant: if I am the type of dude who would buy pepper spray for the women in my life, I don't need to be told that I should care about women, or any fellow human being, for that matter.

Not trying to be overly harsh here. Congrats on you for stepping it up and trying something out. But if there's resolvable problems (IMO, of course), might as well think about them now and help the success of your noble mission.

<comment><USER14> >What if you are not a "dude"?

There is literally nothing in the passage you quote that implies women can't buy themselves pepper spray. "Have enough money to buy one? Do it." implies everyone, regardless of gender, should be buying cans to use or distribute. The parenthetical bit is a little weird, but I assume they mean that it's not just your close friends and family, no women should ever be raped.

There are issues with the site, and I think you raise some valid points. But this is just jumping to conclusions, and it muddies the issue a bit.

<comment><USER13> "Jumping to conclusions" would be saying that the creators of this site are afflicted with "white knight syndrome." I'm only saying that this text reads as if they were, and it's a case of inelegant wording that could (and should) be fixed.

You're right that it doesn't say that women _can't_ buy it for themselves. But 80% of that phrase is exhorting men to be chivalrous and empower women...the "hey you guys, be a MAN and help out your girls" just feels off in this context. That's all.

<comment><USER14> I think they're mostly elaborating because the call-to-action is less immediately relevant if you're male. They could add equal text to exhort women to buy the product, but it would just state what's already implied, "Buy some pepper spray to defend yourself against attackers".

In a culture where men have more authority and power than women, part of the responsibility for giving women back control of their lives and bodies rests with the men who currently wield social status. I think encouraging men to support their female friends and relatives is arguably more important and effective than the actual pepper spray, because that's what will create positive social change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this idea, at least as a temporary stop-gap. Long term, more needs to be done in terms of teaching the men the value of women. That involves a change of the heart as well as mind.</comment>


Majority of H-1B employers pay migrant workers well below market wages - <AUTHOR> https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wage-levels/ <comment><USER2> The point of the H1-B program was to attract talent that had high tech skills couldn't be found domestically. However this system has been used is as a way of getting employees with the same skill-sets at lower rates. There is a whole industry that popped up to help companies structure their job postings such that no one local would apply so they could then go and say they needed an H1-B. So it is absolutely no surprise that they pay below market wages, that is how they use the system!</comment>


Cognitect dev-tools (Datomic dev-local, REBL) bundled (+ free) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/cognitect/status/1296551781007273990 <comment><USER2> REBL was free for personal use before. Commercial use required a Datomic license or a monthly Patreon subscription. REBL is now free for commercial use as well. At least, that's my understanding of this latest bundling change.

<comment><AUTHOR> you're right, I updated the title (removed "for personal use" qualifier)</comment></comment>


A 4 day working week could improve gender equality - <AUTHOR> https://timesquared.co/2019/02/14/the-four-day-work-week-is-fantastic-news-for-gender-equality/ <comment><AUTHOR> Much has been made of the ways a four-day work week could increase productivity and worker satisfaction. But the shift could also be a huge win for gender equality.

The gender pay gap starts to expand after women have children. At first, both parents' incomes take a knock, but men's quickly recover. Women's never do. The "motherhood penalty" is reflected in a woman's lower pay—and often lower status at work—throughout her career.

This is due to factors such as working fewer hours due to prioritizing child care, cultural norms meaning employers look more favorably on women taken parental leave in countries where either parent can, and that men are often already in higher paid jobs so the mother taking more time off is financially advantageous.

A four-day working week could help reduce these factors, as well as reducing overall stress levels for all employees.</comment>


Australian government tells citizens to turn off two-factor authentication - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/australian-government-tells-citizens-to-turn-off-two-factor-authentication/ <comment><USER2> Well that's a contender for overblown fear mongering headline of the week. Let's try again, headlining it "Australian government website encourages users to downgrade their account security by turning off TFA". I know, I'll generate less outrage, but on the bright side it's factually accurate, which is a lot more than you can say for the original (for a start, you don't need to be an Australian citizen to use a mygov account).

<comment><USER3> I think the rule is you have to use the original page headline. avoids editorializing.

<comment><USER2> Yes, sorry - I was criticizing the article, not the poster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The reasoning behind myGov's suggestion is understandable: some tourists > will swap their Australian SIM cards to local ones while on holiday. Once > this is done, they won't be able to receive myGov security codes without > reinstalling their Australian SIMs, which is a hassle.

</comment><comment><USER5> Also relevant [http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer- security/taxpaye...](http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer- security/taxpayer-records-exposed-by-serious-ato-mygov-security- flaw-20151117-gl1kex.html)

Security isn't a strong point with these people, which is amazing for a portal that has literally every relationship you have with the Aus government …

</comment><comment><USER6> As someone who started using 2fa only yesterday, I was wondering whether it would have been possible for the Australian government to have an app-based token as an alternative? How is that compared to hassles of text-based tokens when someone if out of the country?

Edit: grammar.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't matter if it's a text message or OTA application like FreeOTP. Both require physical access to device you authenticated before. Personally I prefer OTP, just because I don't want to provide my phone number everywhere.

<comment><USER2> It does matter, because the apparent rationale is that they know users change SIM while travelling - so they have access to the device but not to the phone number used for SMS.</comment></comment></comment>


Bre Pettis of MakerBot and NYC Resistor  - <AUTHOR> http://www.designglut.com/2009/08/bre-pettis-of-makerbot-and-nyc-resistor/

<comment><USER2> Pretty brilliant design. I can't wait to see 3D printers becoming a part of everyday life in the future.</comment>


Sharp Develop – Open Source Alternative to Visual Studio - <AUTHOR> http://stephenhaunts.com/2014/04/03/develop-open-source-alternative-to-visual-studio/

<comment><USER2> No. The word "alternative" implies a certain quality and that you can actually switch. Sorry but this isn't the case here. I've used SharpDevelop in the past but there is a world of difference between VS + R# and SharpDevelop.

<comment><USER3> I am with you, but I think that Roslyn has a really good change to change that. Sometimes I wonder how Roslyn will affect JetBrains' business. It should be pretty easy to re-produce quite a lot of core ReSharper features.

<comment><USER4> I caught a bit of the Build live stream yesterday. Showed some R# like code cleanup in the next version of VS.

<comment><USER5> what's R#? I can't find anything significant on Google.

<comment><USER6> It's resharper. An add-in to Visual Studio that makes refactoring soooo much better.

[http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/](http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have such fond memories of SharpDevelop. In 2006 I was reaching the limits of the MS Access form designer for an internal database I'd created. I requested VS Express be installed on my machine but the request was ignored - enter SharpDevelop, a dream because it didn't require admin rights to install.

Soon I had a VB.NET (shudder, but at the time...) app up and running and using an Access DB as the backend. I compiled it and distributed in a shared network folder for the rest of the team.

Utter hack, of course. But the company was working on a SAP-based system that was going to replace everything, so it didn't matter. I spoke to an old co- worker last year and what do you know - the SAP system still isn't working correctly and my old app is still in use. I almost feel guilty...

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been following this for a while. I applaud the effort but there is no way they can keep up with VS. Also Xamarin forked SharpDevelop ages ago into MonoDevelop, but I don't know if any contributions flow back from MonoDevelop to SharpDevelop.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it necessarily has to keep up with VS as that will always be a loosing battle. I just think it needs to feature complete in its own way to make it a viable alternative, and I think they are at the point of achieving that.

<comment><USER9> If you aim for feature parity with a product from a company that can devote orders of magnitude more resources (and influence external requirements) than yours, you'll always lose.

The only way to win is to redefine the criteria by which your products are measured in a way that your product becomes the superior one and your huge competitor's can't immediately follow. In this case, you'd have to redefine what an IDE is supposed to do by building one that's much better in a significant scenario than VS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm with Yegge on this one. [0]

That said, I have turned to SharpDevelop at times for the debugger, because after .NET 2 the standalone CLR debugger was no longer supported. It has some quirks, but it works.

[0] [https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective- emacs](https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/effective-emacs)

<comment><USER11> There are a handful of WinDbg plugins:

[http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/11/netext](http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/11/netext)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> At least for C++ native development, a development tool comparison with Visual Studio is just misplaced. Alex Ionescu, a ReactOS NT kernel developer, in one question at a Montreal conference last year was asked about the operating system's attained level of compatibility for applications in general and about Visual Studio in particular. His answer was that Visual Studio will be the last piece, as it so intricately fused into the OS internals. It would be insane to pretend to be able to compete (in every aspect) against something like Visual Studio which can use undocumented resources not available to anyone but to Microsoft's own toy!

</comment><comment><USER13> This is nice, but no... it will never replace VS. I'm sorry if I sound arrogant, but if anyone disagrees than they either never used VS or don't know its potential. I'm no MS fanboy, but VS is simply the best IDE.

<comment><USER14> No, it isn't. It's the best IDE for C# on a windows OS. Important to have those qualifiers.

<comment><USER15> As a Linux user, and someone who really dislikes having to boot into Windows in general, even I must admit that there is nothing close to Visual Studio for developing in C++.

<comment><USER14> I disagree. Unless you have some trivial C++ project (<100KLOC) you have to buy the plugin from whole tomato for a 1000$ for VS to be at all usable (at least last time I had to use VS - has this changed?). Power tools and a couple of other plugins and you just about get the functionality that other IDEs have built in. As nice as various specialised things like remote debugging on xbox, compile on the fly etc. are - overall it's pretty sluggish and limited when it comes to customisation.

Opinions, opinions, opinions...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Out of interest, how does this compare with the free editions of Visual Studio? Is there any compelling reason to use it over them?

I am genuinely interested; I don't do much (any?) C# at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a comparison matrix between #develop and VS express here.

[http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/mattward/articles/Vi...](http://community.sharpdevelop.net/blogs/mattward/articles/VisualStudioExpressComparison.aspx)

<comment><USER16> Thanks. It looks like you'd benefit from installing both!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome that this stuff is still around.

I remember working at place in the mid-2000s that needed desktop apps but didn't pay for Visual Studio (pre-express days) so this is what we chose. We built lots of good stuff with it.

Looking through that feature list it looks there are still some reasons to use it over VS express, I'm going to download it tonight and check it out. Working with it before I remember it being very stable and easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER18> The main problem with Visual Studio for me is lack of portability - now with Mono, I want to be able to use FOSS tooling to make lovely C# apps, and so when something like this sprouts up it's like ooh, perhaps it'll be cross compatible. Nope. Surely if it's _built_ in .NET it can't be that difficult to make it run on Mono, so why yet another Windows only .NET IDE?

<comment><USER19> MonoDevelop is cross platform compatible and its decent but it's certainly no Visual Studio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's unclear if this supports C++ though. The Downloads page says C# only if I read correctly, however the screenshot for a new project shows C++ and many other project types....

Anyone know? I'd love to make a Cocos2d-x project so others can have an alternative to VS.

</comment><comment><USER21> It looks interesting - and I will certainly give it a go the next time visual studio's WPF designer is running at a snails pace, but it doesn't really seem like there is much to differentiate it - it mostly looks like a feature-by- feature clone of visual studio.

</comment><comment><USER22> I use it for python and I managed to build a compiled .NET app with SD and IronPython, and for this feature I will always use SharpDevelop.

But I still like PTVS because it supports autocomplete.

</comment><comment><USER23> PlantUML can't be beat IMHO for UML diagrams. It's the Markdown for UML.

</comment><comment><USER24> VS plugin support is crucial for applications like GPU computing or Qt.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah i agree. I think sharp develop is coming along very well though. It will be interesting to see where they go with it. I am going to start using it for my personal open source projects, but for my commercial work for me and my teams I will stick with VS as we have MSDN licenses and support agreements in place.

<comment><USER25> Anything you find yourself missing when using it?

<comment><AUTHOR> default support for MSTests would be nice as this is what I have written my tests in. There is an add-on for it, but it doesn't look that good. Its not real biggy though, it wouldn't take much effort to migrate my tests over to NUnit. TFS integration would be good too. For my personal projects I upload my source to Codeplex and I use the TFS integration for this.

Saying that I could just install the TFS shell extensions and check in/out code from explorer. Its not that much of a hardship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Visual Studio is indeed very powerful, but its users have to pay the price with ever increasing complexity. There are far too many options available for a user at a given moment. Having constraints would be nice. Also, it would be nice for it to have a full-powered command-line interface for generation.</comment>


Ask HN: "tools wiki" - <AUTHOR> Is there anything like a curated list or Wiki of Software Engineering tools; a place where you'd go to see what tools are used for a given task. For instance, tools for Configuration Management, frameworks for Web dev, Database systems, etc. <comment><USER2> The awesome lists you'll find on Github sound like they might be what you want, e.g. awesome-docker, awesome-flask, awesome-elixir, etc etc.

You can find a curated master list of awesome lists here: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing, that list of lists is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Zeef appears to have curation down to a science: [https://zeef.com/](https://zeef.com/)

Examples: [https://linux.zeef.com](https://linux.zeef.com) and [https://databases.zeef.com](https://databases.zeef.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Honestly I'd much prefer to see more "comparison" type sites/pages.

Saying "use X for config management" does nothing but create a culture of followers who have no real idea why they do what they do.

Instead, pick a topic and try learning about the pros and cons of the available tools/solutions, and then consider the implications of using it for your environment (or for different types of environments if you do client work for example, and then experiment with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely. What I was looking for was a quick way to see what tools are trending in given niches. Stackshare achieves that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've got a good number of tools on StackShare [https://stackshare.io/categories](https://stackshare.io/categories)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is also great, thanks for sharing. Very informative without being overwhelming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the purpose of such lists? Aren't you just going to search via google or directly on github anyway?

My point is: A list is not worth much, if the criteria used for selecting the list's items, are not clearly stated.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you avoid distractions during programming in office space? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Put on my noise cancelling headphone. Basically, this is a nice way to say do not disturb.

</comment><comment><USER3> Close your door.</comment>


Ask HN: How to avoid being arrogant? - <AUTHOR> I have been thinking about arrogance for the last five years and I still cannot grasp it.
Answering any of the questions below will help to discuss the premier question:
1 - What exactly is arrogance?
2 - How do you detect arrogance?
3 - Why some people become arrogant?
4 - Is it always bad? If so, how do you avoid being arrogant? <comment><USER3> Technical people suffer from what I call "Engineer's Disease". We think because we're an expert in one area, we're automatically an expert in other areas. Just recognizing that helps.

I've also observed that there are generally two types of confidence: the brash, in-your-face type and the quiet, in-the-corner type. The point is not the type, the point is confidence. You need confidence in order to tackle problems, which might be wearing a mask of arrogance.

<comment><USER4> > Technical people suffer from what I call "Engineer's Disease". We think > because we're an expert in one area, we're automatically an expert in other > areas. Just recognizing that helps.

I've seen this borne out plenty of times. It can cause trouble when someone with this mindset doesn't realize that not everything is like software, and that 'moving fast and breaking things' in the wrong environment can waste lots of time and money.

<comment><USER5> Now I haven't worked too many places, so I may be naive and/or ignorant, but it's my feeling that most software jobs outside SV and the startup culture are also the wrong environment for "move fast and break things".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _1 - What exactly is arrogance?_

From an appearance/soft-skills perspective, it is one possible mode of the assertion of social dominance based on skill/expertise. It is a more aggressive one, hence it is more likely to backfire. There are far better ways to assert social dominance based on skill/expertise which are more socially productive and far less prone to backfire.

From a mental functionality perspective, you're being arrogant when you are prone to false negatives when judging other people and their input and prone to false positives when judging your own.

 _how do you avoid being arrogant?_

Humility. Spend time at the bottom of a learning curve. Truly take a deep dive into a different mental model of the world. Prove the null hypothesis. "If you're the smartest guy in the room, you're in the wrong room." If it's the case that no matter what you try, you can't ever find your way to a place where you're mistaken, you missed some big facet of reality, or you're a beginner again, then congrats: You Are Arrogant!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a great question with a lot to answer. Would love to hear everyone else's thoughts on it.

To me arrogance is conceited. It's assuming you're better than everyone else. It's assuming everyone else is _worse than you_ , and making it shown.

Detecting arrogance is pattern-matching for multiple traits more than a single characteristic. Some examples that show arrogance:

\- Thinking you always know best

\- Similarly, thinking you're cleverer/funnier/N-er than everyone else

\- Not listening or valuing others opinions

This can be verbal as well as non-verbal. Pretty much all of this boils down to two values: narcissism (self-conceit) and lack of respect.

Why people become arrogant is a tough, philosophical and behavioural question. Is it parenting? Is it consistent self-praise? Maybe not being challenged as a kid? It's hard to find a real answer. Sometimes people really excel at an early age and it might make them think they're better than everyone else. Then again, maybe the person didn't grow up to value other people in the right way.

And generally whether it's bad is a situational call IMO. It's bad if you don't have anything to back it up. Even if you're brilliant it's bad if you're a douche about it (and have no respect for others).

Could you blame Steph Curry for being arrogant about being (one of) the best shooter in history? Maybe not, but if he's a dick about it you probably won't like him.

And that's probably what encapsulates whether arrogance is bad: does it hinder your personal relationships — or your personal progression? If so, it's a bad trait. And I think that question can be asked of anything.

Some people below have posted great points in preventing arrogance. Part of the problem is ego: learn that other people do _hard_ work and _value_ them. Easier said than done. Assuming you're doing the easy part of a project is a good tip. Asking people about what they do and actually trying or taking interest in it is another. Working with smart people is even better, though it's not necessary — even not-so-smart people do tough jobs that people might not value.

</comment><comment><USER8> I share your difficulties in thinking about the topic. I feel like arrogance is one of those mushily-defined words that allows anybody to use it to describe just about anything they don't like about that person.

The problem is that a person with a healthy ego will always come off as negative to some people, because that person won't shy away from confrontation the same way that the humbler majority will. I prefer words like "hubris" which better target identifiable personality defects.

That said, being needlessly confrontational over things that are personally emotional is a good way to get called arrogant. Another thing that people don't like is expression or allusion to a belief that people deserve to be in whatever social class they're in.

A good preventative antidote is to adopt a service mindset. It's hard for people to form negative opinions about people that are always being helpful. I love reading about butlers for this reason, a butler has to embody the service mindset without being humble. This juxtaposition itself is the fodder for an entire genre of books.

<comment><USER9> I find your butler analogy intriguing. What are your favorite such books?

<comment><USER8> My favorite butler book is not a part of the genre, but rather a biographical account of a real butler who lived in America and served James Madison.

[http://www.amazon.com/Slave-White-House-Jennings- Madisons/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Slave-White-House-Jennings- Madisons/dp/0230341985)

Another excellent historical account of the servant class, this time in England, is this gem:

[http://www.amazon.com/Servants-Downstairs-History-Britain- Ni...](http://www.amazon.com/Servants-Downstairs-History-Britain- Nineteenth/dp/0393241092)

I have not actually read any of the butler novels that I mentioned but the one I hear mentioned every time this topic comes up is _The Inimitable Jeeves_ :

[http://www.amazon.com/Inimitable-Jeeves-Wooster-Book- ebook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Inimitable-Jeeves-Wooster-Book- ebook/dp/B0052FYPVS/)

Articles crop up from time to time about modern butlery, which is enjoying a renaissance as Chinese billionaires search for ever more gaudy ways to spend their vast fortunes, like this recent GQ piece:

[http://www.gq.com/story/rich-billionaires-butlers- servants](http://www.gq.com/story/rich-billionaires-butlers-servants)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Working in IT i've dealt with a few arrogant, but often brilliant, tech people.

I myself can come off as arrogant sometimes, and believe me it's always involuntary.

Online I've taken to reading everything I type and trying to imagine reading it from another persons perspective. That way I often throw away comments before posting them.

In real life it's much harder because it often takes me a long pause before I can answer someone, that pause is filtering out unnecessary arrogance and "snide".

</comment><comment><USER11> Very very easy. Work with people that are much better than you. Difficult to be arrogant when someone can kick your ass, field-wise (sometimes even literally-wise). Plus you get to improve _so much_ faster.

And yes, they're _always_ much people better than you.

<comment><USER12> This is an excellent way. You will suddenly feel yourself humbled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> (Not directly answering your question - hope it still helps)

Three principles i live by

\- Everyone lives in a reality were they are the hero - the smart, clever individual who got perfect reasons to do something and was misunderstood if something went wrong. Let them be this hero or you will be the villain.

\- The root of every problem around you is ultimately you, yourself. You should have either fixed it, helped fixing it or avoided it. Blame the next person just delays this.

\- We judge our own intellect with our own intellect. We cannot even understand how stupid we are (esp. in specific areas that are not interesting to us). Assume the worst in your own case and you are on the safe side.

<comment><USER14> >Everyone lives in a reality were they are the hero

...have you ever read anything by this guy?

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2006/12/if_this_is_one_of_the...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2006/12/if_this_is_one_of_the_sexiest.html)

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/narcissism/](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/narcissism/)

<comment><USER13> thanks for the links - will read :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One observation I've made over time is that arrogance is, often, a mark of inexperience.

I've observed this in myself as well as countless others - on way up the learning curve you think yourself an expert and become arrogant about it right before you realise that in fact the computing industry (and probably applies to many other industries too) is so complex that it's likely impossible for a single person to understand everything.

Thus, for some people, a good way to combat arrogance is to gently teach them things they don't know - which will hopefully lead them to understand that we all have much to learn. It certainly worked for me.

</comment><comment><USER16> _1\. What exactly is arrogance?_

Arrogance can be perceived as an offensive display of superiority. We can have straight forward manifestations of arrogance but also comes in a disguised or cloaked form.

 _2\. How do you detect arrogance?_

If it's straight forward it is easy. But sometimes is well concealed behind actions, irony or even _gentle_ words. I believe that we detect (or display for the matter) arrogance from a set of behavioral traits more than anything else.

 _3\. Why some (we?) people become arrogant?_

Because we are not wise.-

The Socratic paradox goes like "I know one thing: that I know nothing". Socrates believed that he is the wisest man in Athens because he _knows_ that he _does not know_ while others falsely believe that _they know_. Pythia (the famous oracle of Ancient Greece) confirms that Socrates is the wisest man in Athens.

What Socrates was trying to say gets a lot clearer by Aristotle a couple of decades later, when he writes "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.". Shakespeare in 1603 A.D. in _As you like it_ writes one of my favorite rhymes: "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

Combining all the above, we can say that smart doesn't make wise. Wisdom comes through experience and careful unselfish study. Smart is good, shiny but can get us easily out of our way. Wisdom is what we should be aim at.

Then the question becomes: What is wisdom? And Socrates replies "The act of making wise decisions". Which decisions are wise? "The ones that do not hurt your spirit". Socrates believes - like Christ- that even if actively attacked, we should avoid attacking-back because it will ultimately cause us anger and hurt our _pure_ spirit. Socrates says that every human has the obligation to keep his spirit as _pure_ as possible: no anger, no fights, no fears, etc.

 _4\. Is it always bad?_

Yes. It is always bad.

 _5\. If so, how do you avoid being arrogant?_

See answer No 3.

<comment><USER17> > an offensive display of superiority

I suppose people may differ as to whether arrogance that corresponds to actual excellence is more or less irritating than arrogance that corresponds to no actual excellence, but surely we've all seen it many times in cases where the arrogant person wasn't actually superior--or not superior enough to warrant their confidence.

<comment><USER18> This idea of 'offensiveness' is really what I'd like to understand. Is arrogance subjective, or at least dependent on how it is directed toward present company? Alternatively, is it merely confidence out of proportion with knowledge/experience without being directed at any/all?

I've come across both and only the first type is annoying. The second can first be mistaken as the first but then get to know them as being very enthusiastic and inexperienced (not knowing what they don't know).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> IMO the problem is about making people feel bad. Arrogance is the "I'm smart you're not" attitude.

Sometimes you think you're helping and sometimes you're actually helping but you're still making people feel bad about themselves.

YC recommended a nice book that can help you avoid being arrogant: Non-violent communication: a language of life

[https://books.google.com.br/books?id=nY4tDDO93E8C&printsec=f...](https://books.google.com.br/books?id=nY4tDDO93E8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=nonviolent+communication+a+language+of+life&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitu- qWj4TKAhXIiJAKHTxLBpwQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=nonviolent%20communication%20a%20language%20of%20life&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER20> > how do you avoid being arrogant?

Listen, no matter what, and make it a point to not interrupt.

This may or may not stop you from _being_ arrogant, but it can avoid that perception, which is almost as good for group dynamics.

<comment><USER21> Listening is a valuable life skill - any tips explaining how to do this most effectively would be appreciated!

One thing I have found helpful is to repeat what was said to verify correct understanding, but this can easily be misinterpreted as insincere if done too often.

<comment><USER22> For myself, I observe what shows up in my emotions and body. No judgment of myself and those feelings. Just observing. Allowing those physical and emotional states to just be without acting on them is very helpful to being able to be present with and listen to others. Holidays with family can offer excellent opportunities for practicing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 1 - IMO, Arrogance is a combined belief that one knows more or is more capable than one might actually be, but certainly more than one's peers. This tends to lead to a sense of higher value than those peers, and a disregard for equality.

2 - Detecting arrogance in the self can be hard, but isolation is a good warning sign. If one finds oneself separate from the group, there can be a variety of factors, but check in your heart to see if arrogance is the cause first. To detect it in others, ask questions that deal with empathy and helping others.

3 - People can become arrogant if they are the "biggest fish in a small pond" for too long, and actually _are_ the smartest person in the room for a while. This is one reason it's good to always put yourself in work and cultural situations that test the limits of your abilities and allow you to grow and teach simultaneously.

4 - Arrogance as commonly defined is probably always a "bad" trait, simply because it is anti-social, and an argument can be made that the only real ethical behavior is social behavior. That said, many many arrogant people have made significant contributions to society, but it's important to understand that their arrogance or anti-social behavior may have been a symptom of their brilliance, not the cause.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd say arrogance is expecting success without actual certainty that it will occur. Some people are good enough at what they do that their odds of success are high enough to make them seem trustworthy when they speak confidently.

Others have no real reason to expect to be successful, having never experienced success in what they are attempting.

So to me, the best way to avoid arrogance is to take an honest assessment of your experience and whether you have actually experienced success in the arena you are attempting to enter, and if you can't point to past successes, don't speak as if you expect to succeed this time.

This is something that comes with age, I believe. As you get older you gain more experience, so you understand that success is difficult to achieve. This does not necessarily mean approaching things with a defeatist attitude, but rather to take a more comprehensive look at the challenges and not merely rely on your own unproven abilities and proceed accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER25> Arrogance is basically over-confidence to the point of brash, rude and delusional.

So assured of your correctness that you'll ignore contrary information. A military type example would be to assume that your forces are so superior to the enemy that you ignore information about new countermeasures and send your troops to their death.

In programming or business terms, you could have a process that people assume is the right way to do everything in every situation who are unwilling to adapt to nuances.

A few relatable examples: \- Do everything in the database! \- Do everything in the application! \- Do everything in the client! \- This Javascript framework will always be around, we should totally build our business around it! \- Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM!

Usually the best way to detect it is to ask somebody holding hard to a point of view to explain it.

So IMO, the best way to explain arrogance would be delusion in combination with ability to act on it.

</comment><comment><USER26> > 1 - What exactly is arrogance?

Arrogance is the presumption of competence where there is none.

> 2 - How do you detect arrogance?

If you have competence, it's fairly easy to detect incompetence in others. If you want to detect incompetence in yourself ... that's easy. Let yourself fail.

Arrogant people never expose themselves to the possibility of failure. In the rare circumstance when it does happen, they deny it. Anything else would pierce the veil of presumed competence.

Let yourself fail. Over and over again. Acknowledge the failure. Keep exposing yourself to new things and keep pushing outside your comfort zone. That will keep you nice and humble.

> 3 - Why some people become arrogant?

Fear. Fear of failure. Fear of being perceived as a failure.

> 4 - Is it always bad?

Yes.

<comment><USER27> While I agree about your general tone there can be arrogance with competence.

It is all about how one presents oneself. Are you open to new ideas? Do you treat other people not as morans that didn't think through their problem somewhat?

So yeah, pretty much your point about being humble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think some people become arrogant when they, for whatever reason, start to view themselves as innately superior to other human beings, and as a result, demonstrate a hostility then they feel that their superiority is threatened. I feel like this really just stems from an insecurity that someone has, like if someone is very intelligent at an elite university and feels that by that virtue they are superior to others and that to them it's absurd that an average person could be better than them.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think being aware of it is already a step in the right direction. You can't control what you're saying at all time, but you can try and make effort to be less and less arrogant. Notice when you are and try to fix it, notice when you aren't and try to repeat the pattern.

Of course this advice assume you have already understood that 1) there is nothing to be gained but bad things by being arrogant and that 2) there is no reason to be arrogant.

</comment><comment><USER17> Arrogance which bothers me in my children and of which I am ashamed when I display it is a strident confidence in one's judgement about some matter that's out of proportion to one's actual knowledge and experience. (It's quite distinct from charming childish optimism that one can take on any challenge.)

I believe you can become arrogant by getting used to being the smartest person in the room (or believing you are), noticing the times you readily had insights that others lack, etc.. Confirmation bias plays in, too, since as soon as you start to conceive of yourself as knowing, unless you try very hard not to, you'll take more note of events that confirm your self-assessment than that disconfirm it.

As others have noted, arrogance as described here is closely akin to the vice of pride (which is opposed to the virtue of humility). The main distinction I would draw is that arrogance to me has a stronger social aspect--a particular way of presenting oneself, born from pride. Pride itself is a spiritual state and could (at least hypothetically) pass unnoticed if you were also good at hiding it.

I referred to confidence-out-of-proportion, and I think I stick with that. To my mind, a person who exhibits _rational_ confidence in their judgement is not arrogant by definition, even if that confidence is (correctly) very high. But arrogance isn't the only way to go wrong. E.g., a software BDFL may be a jerk even if he's not arrogant, and someone who confidently makes a decision they had authority to make without consulting someone who would rather have been consulted isn't arrogant either, but may none the less have committed a faux pas. Both may be incorrectly perceived as or called arrogant.

<comment><USER30> " a strident confidence in one's judgement about some matter that's out of proportion to one's actual knowledge and experience."

vs.

"childish optimism that one can take on any challenge."

So is age the only differentiating criterion?

<comment><USER17> No. There's an important difference in tone or attitude and also in content. "I have little to nothing to learn about/from this" vs "I can [will be able to] do this". Kids can be arrogant and they can be childishly optimistic. Programmers are notoriously optimistic about our ability to quickly solve problems, but even where it's not arrogance (as I think it's usually not) I wouldn't usually call it childish optimism since (1) it has lost it's charm since more is usually at stake and (2) we expect people to grow up and do better than they did when they were nine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> if you come off as arrogant it probably means you don't push yourself outside of your comfort zone often enough.

i.e. you aren't growing as a human being, you're static, and have become comfortable there in your little niche, so you look down on others who are learning new things.

when was the last time you felt dumb? been a while? fix that. most arrogant people are afraid of feeling dumb so they just dismiss things they aren't good at as beneath them.

</comment><comment><USER32> Arrogance is a way of pushing others down socially while using that push to lift yourself up above others.

Nerds often come out as arrogant by merely offering unsolicited advice or opinions. It doesn't matter if you actually do know what you think you know: you can still be arrogant even if you're right. This sort of arrogance is basically about stepping onto someone else's lawn.

For the general arrogance, I don't have answers. I haven't much felt the need for setting myself above others outside of a special context where I believe that my skills will benefit everybody so I'm not quite sure what's driving that.

For the nerdy arrogance, there's one thing I do: I usually negotiate responsibilities first before acting, i.e. I claim the territory before I pull out my tools.

If I've agreed with someone that I should take a look at fixing something, then I can rightfully and confidently exercise my knowhow myself because finding the solution has become my own territory. If it turns out to be a problem, I'll just return to negotiating: "I understood you wanted me to fix this so do you want me to continue or do you want to fix it yourself?" Conversely, if there is no agreement about territory I won't step in but just let them know they can contact me if they need me. I might know exactly how to fix something but I realise it's not my place until we've first cleared who's going to do what.

Also, getting into a debate with someone you don't know who actually does like debating, can easily be considered arrogant. Likewise there: while debating can be fun with the right person, however, most of the time with most people it isn't so I'll just skip that unless I specifically know the person.

</comment><comment><USER33> > What exactly is arrogance?

Egos constantly need validation. In some people, this need results in certain annoying validation seeking behaviors. A few office examples are: constantly bringing attention to one's abilities or accomplishments, speaking to others in a condescending tone, putting others down, and failing to listen to others. I believe these sorts of validation seeking behaviors are what we collectively call arrogance.

> Is it always bad? If so, how do you avoid being arrogant?

Arrogance is when your ego gets in the way of your daily life. Arrogant people are too focused on themselves to notice that they are annoying others. This hinders their ability to communicate or receive correct information. This makes them less productive in a team environment and a pain to work with.

IMO The best way to avoid arrogance is to be mindful about your interactions with people. If you practice mindfulness and compassion in your daily interactions with others, you will find that people will enjoy interacting with you more. As your mindfulness skills develop, your skills in communication with others increase as well.

</comment><comment><USER34> 1 - Arrogance is a combination of stubbornness, pride, and ignorance that there are other ways.

2 - Detecting arrogance in it's subtleties can tricky, but often times it's less subtle. A nice Star Wars linkage is 'only the Sith deal in absolutes'. Otherwise, you can detect when people avoid asking or answering questions that might allow other input.

3 - Some people probably become arrogant as a defense mechanism to being questioned. Often, by over compensating with confidence it can help you lead dictatorially. By being the loudest, most stubborn, and sometimes / most of the time right (to at least some degree) they will get their way by the passives in a group. More broadly speaking, arrogance is caused by a lack of perspective - an inability to perceive that someone else might bring ideas to the table or that you might be at all inadequate.

4 - Yes, it's always bad or at least not an admirable trait. Particularly when working with others. By being arrogant you will often miss different solutions that may be easier, quicker, more elegant, or better explained.

</comment><comment><USER35> Somebody told me once to be open-minded without being empty-headed. I've also heard the phrase "intellectual humility", which I like a lot.

Everybody is stupid and broken in their own way which we can never see ourselves, yet we make a conscious and sometimes very difficult effort to like each other and get along anyway. Either you "get" that, or you're arrogant.

</comment><comment><USER36> The way I see it, actual arrogance is a character flaw, allowing yourself to become secure in your "knowledge" that you have something over other people which makes you unconditionally superior. I don't think there's much you can do to cure that except introspection.

If you do not actually think of yourself as superior to others, you can accidentally appear arrogant by failing due diligence when communicating with other people, which in turn may be caused by lack of practice. Pay attention to what you say, and think of what you could have said to deliver your message better.

Especially in writing it's important to imagine how the reader may react to your words, and consider the benefit of terseness over the possibility that you may be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Going over your phrasing once or twice is a good idea as well. Also keep in mind that whoever you're talking to can not know everything that you know, and that this is often not their own fault.

</comment><comment><USER37> I believe that arrogance is failing to play the social game. It's not just an internal state. It may be symptomatic of an internal state, but that's not what people see. People only see what's on the outside.

And the fact is that there are all sorts of people with all sorts of internal regard, but there are also between-individual differences in theory of mind.

It doesn't matter whether you are Bill Gates, Joe the Plumber, or Andrew Ng. You can always benefit from playing the game. You are never too elite or too rich to play the game. Even if you think you're better than everyone else, as long as you can easily manage an elegant model of public perception, it behooves you to play.

So why would someone not play? I think, (1) your theory of mind isn't up to par, or (2) you have contempt for people and an impulsivity that gets in your way notwithstanding your individual and crowd modelling abilities, or (3) some combination thereof.

</comment><comment><USER38> 1 - Arrogance is confidence projected outwards (in a way that looks ugly)

2 - People who are arrogant do not ask much questions. Arrogant people are unpleasant to interact with.

3 - Coping mechanism for little internal confidence. Alternatively, nobody told them they are projecting or they can't see this for themselves. In pathetic cases they can not help themselves.

4 - No, not always bad. In some roles it is necessary to exude confidence and a better-than-thou attitude. But when you are not a general, king, pope, or professor, then people will not take kindly to such behavior.

You can avoid being arrogant, the same way you can (try to) avoid being stupid, Andrey Kolmogorov: "Every mathematician believes that he is ahead of the others. The reason none state this belief in public is because they are intelligent people.". Also realize that there is only one way to be perfectly correct, but a possibly infinite ways of being wrong.

</comment><comment><USER39> If what you say makes the people you are talking to feel stupid, and you don't care that it does, then you will be perceived as arrogant. There are other ways of being arrogant, I am sure. This is one way.

If people who are more powerful than you perceive you to be arrogant, they will tend to lash out and strike back. If people who are less powerful than you perceive you as arrogant, they will walk on eggshells around you. Because no one likes to feel stupid.

The tricky thing is that you need to remember to care about how what you say will make people feel, even when what you are saying is purely technical in nature. In other words, you can't ever focus so purely on the technical issues that you forget to craft your words to account for your audience's feelings. Which is really hard.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is an interesting question, and I'm curious to see what others here respond with.

I would say arrogance is using your power, wealth, prestige just to show others that you are powerful.

The secret to gaining respect is having power, but only leveraging it when absolutely necessary.

</comment><comment><USER41> 1\. Confidence at someone else's expense.

2\. From a lack of empathy or consideration.

3\. I think it's largely due to deep rooted insecurity (maybe in other areas than their strengths).

4\. I think it is always bad. I don't know how you can avoid it aside from self-reflection.

</comment><comment><USER42> I see arrogance as actions where a person does not have or show empathy/understanding towards others. So, in general, people should not try to be less arrogant (that would be a fools errand). Instead people should focus on developing empathy.

IMHO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. What would you suggest in order to develop empathy?

<comment><USER42> Constant reflection and continuous improvement.

So find times throughout the day to pause and reflect on what you've said and done. Ask yourself how others might interpret what you've said and done and if that could have been done in a different way that still accomplishes the same thing while being more understanding of their situations/circumstances.

Once you have developed that habit you can start to strategically craft that questioning into everything you do/say proactively.

Keep doing this continually and ideally you will develop more empathy.

Edit: also find time to regularly volunteer in some way. i.e. if all of the things you do are towards one end - helping yourself, it's difficult to believe you're actually an empathic/caring person. Sometimes you have to live it to become it. So do it and then you'll be it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> How to avoid being arrogant:

"Assume that your part of the project is the easy part." [1]

"Here's a polite person's trick, one that has never failed me. ... Ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: 'Wow. That sounds hard.'" \- Paul Ford [2]

[1] [http://beyondmanaging.com/2014/09/assume-yours-is-the- easy-p...](http://beyondmanaging.com/2014/09/assume-yours-is-the-easy-part/)

[2] [https://medium.com/message/how-to-be- polite-9bf1e69e888c](https://medium.com/message/how-to-be-polite-9bf1e69e888c)

<comment><USER44> About your #2: be careful (maybe practice a bit first) not to sound sarcastic/condescending.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would say sometimes there is a fine line between arrogance and confidence. I sometimes try to tackle engineering problems, that may be too large for me to tackle by myself. But that is because I want to challenge myself, and prove to myself what I am capable of. Perhaps this is arrogance, perhaps this is just believing in yourself and your capabilities.

When arrogance becomes problematic is when it impacts your ability to work with others. The best type of person is someone who can bring others in to work with them, praise the people they are delegating work to. And share the success of a project, with those vital team players.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is a good question, and something I've thought about too. I suspect many HN readers have as well. It seems like there is a very fine line between being confident, smart, and helpful and being arrogant. In IT especially, we can be really intelligent on some levels - able to do these wizard-like things that mortals heap praise on us for- but then real assholes on other levels- thinking our wizardry applies to all aspects of our self and coloring our view of others. Confession: Just now, I berated (behind her back) a user for not knowing how to close a browser tab. To her face (I think, in this case) I was polite and helpful. I'd say I was arrogant to the degree I thought or acted like I was generally smarter and better than her. The problem is that sometimes it is subjective - people being helped may be sensitive and feel like you are "talking down" to them when you are not. Or sometimes, in a given situation, you may really slip into arrogance without realizing it.

I'm sure others will tell you I'm not great at it, but I think the key is to cultivate an attitude where you _genuinely_ value all other people regardless of ability (or whatever you suspect is causing you to value people lower.) If you're in a position to do so, _genuinely_ want to help other people to the degree they want to be helped.

A few things that come to mind to combat it:

\- Be genuinely humble. Don't think you are "a better person" than anybody.

\- Value people as people, not by material measures like intellect, health, wealth, etc.

\- It is ok to think you are good at something, but don't brag. Realize you have not always been good, and there is always somebody better.

\- When appropriate, help others, but be sure they want help.

\- When helping, be really nice and sympathetic to those you help.

\- Volunteer and serve poor/needy/disabled. Don't be proud or brag about doing it, but genuinely want to help those who for whatever reason are not lucky enough to be discussing arrogance on HN ;) Talk to the people and learn their names and stories. Just interacting with those people and treating them as people will help you find balance.

</comment><comment><USER46> 1) Arrogance is contempt of those less fortunate than oneself.

2) Almost everyone is arrogant to others in one way or another. Usually derision is expressed in private, but an arrogant person makes no attempt to hide it.

3) More often than not, arrogance is a front to hide and protect a secret vast well of incompetence. My own experience has shown that the bigger the attitude, the smaller the talent. Almost invariably.

4) Contempt for stupidity or laziness can sometimes be motivating to the recipient, but not usually. Lots of life experience can eventually cure arrogance for some.

Just remember, stupidity makes perfect sense in the face of it all.

</comment><comment><USER47> A good way to stave off arrogance is to remember that you have to physically shove matter into your body every so often, turn it into something foul and dirty, then release it back into the world, just to stay alive. When you breathe, realize that you're utterly dependent on a substance (oxygen) you can't even see. If you stop ingesting it, or if it's no longer available, after 10 minutes you will be dead. You don't know where it comes from except that someone told you it may come from trees.

</comment><comment><USER48> The word "arrogant" is more appropriately used with the benefit of hindsight. It's not appropriate to call someone "arrogant" simply because there is a disagreement of ideas.

Napoleon was "arrogant" for thinking he could march 500,000 troops into Russia in the middle of Winter. But had he succeeded, he'd be described much differently.

Frequently, people that call others "arrogant" are actually voicing their own insecurities and using it as a crutch to avoid moving outside of their comfort zone.

</comment><comment><USER49> Well first I would say that there is an external and internal arrogance - <USER2> that makes you seem arrogant to others, and one that is just your private thoughts. The first is sometimes bad depending on who you're talking to, and the second is ok since it's just your thoughts.

The most important thing to remember is the Golden Rule - treat others as you would wish to be treated in their situation. If being arrogant breaks this rule, then don't do it.

<comment><USER50> > the second is ok since it's just your thoughts

"Watch your thoughts, for they become your words", is part of a Jewish proverb. What's inside of you will eventually come out, so it's best to deal with it straight away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Arrogant, Assertive, Confident, Direct... these could all be used to describe someone by different people and in different situations. Learning how to gauge the perceptions of others is a valuable skill. You can start by simply asking for frank, private feedback. After a while you just start to pick up on reactions. Choosing not to care about said reactions... well, yeah I guess that's arrogant :)

</comment><comment><USER52> "You shouldn't carry on a prize but you should merit it" is what my grandmother used to say. I think this holds true with abilities as well. You've worked hard to be where you are, so be proud, but remember what humility feels like. When I hear myself getting a little bit arrogant, I like to think of JP from Grandma's Boy, a shining example of what not be.

</comment><comment><USER53> I can't offer you a complete definition or guide to arrogance, but one common negative trait in the field of technology that is often called arrogance can be countered by liberal application of the principle of charity:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)

</comment><comment><USER54> Not exactly answering the question, but: Many times "You're so arrogant!" is just a way to stop an argument. It is a way to derail the topic into some unmeasurable subjective trait. And some times the part doing the accusation is the one who does not want to negotiate.

</comment><comment><USER55> Don't read the HN comment section.

</comment><comment><USER56> How to avoid being arrogant? Surround yourself with friends that are better than yourself.

</comment><comment><USER57> Just remember - if you can do it, it is bragging, and you're on your way to avoiding arrogant behavior.

</comment><comment><USER58> 1\. Arrogance is the inability to politely consider someone else's approach or point of view.

2\. Detecting arrogance in others is pretty easy: they do not listen to an alternative point of view with any patience.

I think the question really being asked is: "How do you detect arrogance in yourself?" That's more interesting, and more difficult. Unfortunately arrogant people are the least receptive to the feedback they are arrogant because the root cause is that they are bad at listening. There are some good indicators you can use to help recognize arrogance in yourself if you are an arrogant person by nature, however. I think the most effective is to monitor your use of questions and not statements when having discussions with your peers. If >90% of your contribution to the conversation are statements and not questions, you're almost certainly being arrogant. "We can't do it that way" is very different than "Why did we decide to do it that way?" One is a statement that begs equally fierce opposition, the second starts a conversation that reveals reasoning and the creative process.

So ask lots of questions, and really listen.

3\. I'll avoid answering this--it is different for every person. For many it is simply not having had historical peers on their level to effectively add to a conversation, for others it is just a learned behavior. It isn't as important how people go that way, it is important they recognize it and stop.

4\. Human behaviors are rarely binary good/bad: each usually has a place. Arrogance can be a tool in rare cases where a massive display of confidence can substitute as a shortcut for authority--you might sometimes see a CEO, for example, say "I am right on this and you are wrong, we are doing it my way" (the subtext that this is in the interest of saving time or resources is often lost in translation). Steve Jobs built an empire on this. However, it is generally bad in the long term to display this level of arrogance--all large- scale work is teamwork, and in a organization of 100 peers you will only be the most right statistically a small percentage of the time.

This is why avoiding arrogance is important; it means that you are open to hearing other solutions and implementing them when they make the most sense.

To avoid arrogance is simple, yet hard. You have to actually listen and converse with your peers. If you have disagreements you should state them politely and from a non-combative alternative point of view--not a combative self-driven point of view, and you should not jump to conlusions. For example: "Won't it be harder for a user to access feature X in this redesign?" is better than "How am I supposed to access feature X now? We can't ship this, it is not good enough". The first leads to conversation, allowing the opposition to present their approach, the second does not. Perhaps feature X was buried because it was found to be used with reduced frequency by actual customers? If you start with the second you are less likely to have the conversation with your peers where that critical information is revealed.

<comment><USER54> Regarding (3) -- To grasp someone else's approach or point of view is inherently difficult. Thus we are all arrogant by default.

Even though every person has their own way of expressing this, i believe in this sense arrogance is pretty much a given, and overcoming it to some level (which is never completely) is the challenge. In other words, you don't become arrogant, you're born this way, but you can change.

To listen is something you can learn. You can practice. It might not seem so at first sight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you?

</comment><comment><USER60> 1 - Combination of: Lack of empathy & fear. 2 - See 1 ;) ... 4 - It is bad, unless you're woman in corporation full of men. Then it's tool to succeed.</comment>


Superlubricity – tuning friction to the point where it disappears - <AUTHOR> http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/tuning-friction-nanomachine-development-0604

<comment><USER2> This seems to me to go a long way toward explaining why dissimilar metals make the best bearing interfaces, i.e. the atomic lattices don't match up.

<comment><USER3> I would be surprised if this phenomenon caused the friction between metallic surfaces. The surface of metals aren't that flat on nanoscale (even if they are well polished).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This also kind of seems analogous to the electron Cooper pairs moving through a superconductor... As one electron moves down into a trout, the other moves up into a peak, and because of the push/pull balancing interaction of their paired up connection, energy is not dissipated (as heat), and in-turn no additional energy is required for propagation... They just keep on moving.

<comment><USER5> I haven't heard this theory of superconductivity before. Is it new?

<comment><USER6> It isn't new. That would be BCS Theory[1].

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS_theory)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's pretty funny, when we can finally build a machine in perpetual motion, nobody cares anymore.

<comment><USER8> Even if there is zero surface-surface friction, there is still friction and resistance generated by, eg, the flexing of the materials making contact.

<comment><USER7> Good point, this will bar more complicated mechanisms. But a ring spinning forever around a dimple (in vaccuum of course) should work. Constant pressure so no flexing.

<comment><USER9> "Perfect vacuum" is a classical physics concept which abstracts away quantum effects. In short, it isn't real, and it can never exist.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_vacuum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_vacuum)

So, your perpetual motion device will inevitably interact with virtual particles with momentum contrary to its own, and therefore run down.

Even if you have problems with that, consider this: It's impossible to cool anything to 0K (absolute zero); all warm bodies (warmer than absolute zero) give off photons; therefore, your moving parts will interact with photons carrying momentum contrary to their own, and therefore be slowed and eventually halted. Again, this is unavoidable.

So the simple classical picture of a rock in simple inertial motion through the vacuum of space is valid as a simplification. Remember, though, that it's equally valid to construct a coordinate system where the rock is stationary and everything else is in perpetual motion.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 ways to optimize images for effective Facebook sharing - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/5_ways_to_optimize_images_for_effective_facebook_sharing <comment><AUTHOR> This blog post describes 5 ways to optimize your website or app for social sharing by dynamically manipulating the images you share on Facebook to better match your content and heighten engagement. Sample image manipulation URLs are included, as well as web development code samples.</comment>


Yahoo Dropped the ball on Google Instant in 2005 - <AUTHOR> http://uniquehazards.tumblr.com/post/1088334156/google-instant-is-an-example-of-how-yahoo-could-have

<comment><USER2> I remember, back when Instant was first ramping up staffing from prototype to production levels, saying,

"It's going to be a spectacular failure, but I am very, very glad that I work in a company where we can take risks like this."

(In my defense, remember that chart Google released today showing the resource usage of various incarnations of Instant? It was in the Prototype stage at the time, with a total cost roughly 10-20x existing websearch. We were talking about having to build new datacenters to support it. And the UI was nowhere near as polished; I found it very jarring to use at the time.)

I think there's a lesson for entrepreneurs in here somewhere: imagine where the technology _could be_ , not where it _is_. Almost all innovations are pretty crappy when they first come out. That's a reason to improve them, not a reason to cancel them. Many problems that look impossible at first can be solved given enough engineering effort and creative thinking.

I think it also says a lot about the management style of Larry & Sergei vs. the MBAs at Yahoo. There's a tendency, as companies get bigger, to look at things rationally and say "We have $X to lose if this fails, and some uncertain $Y to gain if it succeeds. The chance of success is low. Let's not do it." Larry & Sergei say "Okay, we know what the risks are. $X is high but manageable, and $Y is unknown but potentially big. Let's do it."

<comment><USER3> The development chart of Instant sounds interesting. I've been unable to find it - could you provide a URL?

<comment><USER2> It's 48 minutes into the official press event on Google Instant:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0eMHRxlJ2c>

(Shamefully, I do not know how to link to a specific time point in a YouTube video.)

BTW, basically all of Othar & Ben's presentation is worth watching (it starts at 30 minutes in) - he says a lot of what I do here, except I'm one of the skeptical people saying "It'll never work". ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an ex-Yahoo!, this is _exactly_ the sort of thing that cheesed me off while I was still working there.

Best memory: not being allowed to use javascript-enhanced sliding panels for pagination, as the reduction in full page refreshes when navigating would have negatively impacted the Ad Impression stats.

(That and the quarterly lay-offs. Good motivational tool, that one.)

<comment><USER5> One of the smart things in Instant for google with instant is positively impacting the Ad Impressions. (page load still not necessary - but ads refresh with the search results)

I won't be surprised if the idea sparked more as an effort for 'How do we increase ad impressions? ' than search assistance for user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a textbook example of Yahoo's problems as a company (I'm an ex-Yahoo).

It's all there: poor execution (performance/quality), insufficient focus on the user experience, focus on per-search revenue rather than long term search share, and above all no appetite for risk. Say what you like about Bing, but they are at least throwing caution to the wind and trying new and different things.

<comment><USER7> I particularly liked their version of Image Search, with "infinitely scrolling" results. It took a while, but Google eventually copied it.

That's what I love about competition: we users are the ones who win!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> At the risk of sounding like a troll, I think the title is unnecessarily specific: yahoo didn't just drop the ball on instant search, photo sharing, social bookmarking, x, or y, or z. They just dropped the ball. Period. As has been extensively documented, Yahoo is a tech company that has never wanted to be a tech company.

Given a few more years, I'm sure they'll get their wish when they cease to be a company altogether.

</comment><comment><USER9> Two points:

1\. their UI was worse. If you don't do something like this right, it can be worse than doing nothing at all.

2\. this depends largely on the correctness of the predictions. I assume Yahoo's predictions weren't half as good either.

But still cool, yes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. Google did a lot of eye tracking studies to get the timing & UI right.

But it means that if Yahoo invested in it, they might have had a shot at getting it right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was big news back then... for interface developers. Its popularity influenced a lot of further development (including spurring Google's AJAX Search API, I believe) and established it as a popular paradigm.

But I remember the version of it on Yahoo's then-beta search site, not this more extensive version on AllTheWeb. Here's an example: [http://looksgoodworkswell.blogspot.com/2005/12/distracting-o...](http://looksgoodworkswell.blogspot.com/2005/12/distracting- or-narrowing-looking.html)

I guess this was a more limited version of it, but it made a lot of sense to just pop up the most relevant result immediately.

</comment><comment><USER11> This wasn't the only innovation in Search that Yahoo dropped the ball on. There were at least a handful of cool ideas implemented at the company, but there was a prevailing attitude of wanting to let Google be the innovator and simply follow in their footsteps (talk about insane).

</comment><comment><USER12> Written by my lead PM from Delicious.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought it was really cool that he did it 5 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like the new Instant Search but I don't think I'll use it much. All my searches are conducted from search bars in Safari or Chrome where I just need to tap or tab to the bar and type. One thing that has changed my search habits recently though is the Safari 5 extension that lets you do mouseover searches where you highlight some text then a little window pops up with some search results and the start of the wikipedia page. So I can look something up without even typing or leaving the page/window. I take it this too has been done before? It's really 'game-changing' as far as my UX and interaction with search/ads goes.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a fan of the idea of the Google interface.

But I don't think it could have made up for an inferior search. If you don't get what you want, you won't care how quickly you get. By 2005, Yahoo had lost on the basic search infrastructure side and even revolutionary interface wouldn't change that.

I'm not even much of a fan of the present implementation of type-ahead on Google. On my machine with an average broad band connection, all it does blank my old results till I've typed my new results. It could be because I'm using Firefox on Ubuntu. Still.</comment>


Final Launch For Endeavour Hours Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.videomomo.com/17567/final-launch-for-endeavour-hours-away/

<comment><USER2> Why aren't more people excited about this?

Guys. We are sending people into space. Space.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can watch live streaming launching of Shuttle Endeavour at <http://www.videomomo.com></comment></comment>