[insonable]

A friend in grad. school would put obvious glaring errors in his preliminary drafts of write-ups so the prof's would then be happy to correct these, feel they'd done their work, and move on, avoiding any actual substantive criticisms requiring actual work on his part to fix.

[sneak]

"just remove the duck"

https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/06/05/duck/

[unethical_ban]

I learned this lesson dealing with auditors many times. These people whose job really should be collaborative in nature (internally) still feel the need to find something, because if they don't, then their bosses say "did you look hard enough?"

So yeah, sometimes as we presented our security policies or documentation, we would highlight an existing problem for which we had a solution or proper executive backing to justify, so that when it was called out, we would haggle and then say "okay, let's fix that". Everyone had done their job.

Off-topic: I was blocked from reading that site using Proton's TX datacenters, but it worked as soon as I switched to Sweden.

Stop blocking VPNs, Rachel.

[rbirkby]

It’s known as Atwood’s Duck. https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/

[martincmartin]

"When preparing a defense, the good Samurai doesn't leave any weakness. The great Samurai leaves one weakness, so he knows from which direction the enemy will attack."

I was given that advice when preparing for my Ph.D. defense. :)

[vidarh]

Hairy arms: https://www.npr.org/2014/11/17/364760847/whats-with-all-of-t...

Though I believe the technique has been given many other names as well.

[itsoktocry]

>A friend in grad. school would put obvious glaring errors in his preliminary drafts of write-ups so the prof's would then be happy to correct these, feel they'd done their work, and move on, avoiding any actual substantive criticisms requiring actual work on his part to fix.

There are people that believe Elon can do no wrong and is always playing 8d chess.

[ilamont]

The worst is when they can't find anything and make shit up.

Had this happen during an audit very early in my working life - "where did this excess income come from?" The books I gave them were clean. Fortunately the accountant made an obvious math error that was easy for me to spot, and the next round went smoothly.

Or was it an error? Hmmm ...

[qup]

That's pretty much a designer/web dev trope, turning in mistakes to the boss that are easy to fix so he can put his stamp on it.

[sidewndr46]

it works the same way in construction as well. Before inspection of something like electrical, you go introduce an obvious error that is easy to observe, doesn't take long to fix, and doesn't require additional materials. The inspector can write a report indicating the work is substandard and later gets to write another report indicating the work is corrected and the sign off is complete. Everyone gets to go home happy at that point.

[Gibbon1]

I saw an interview with a movie producer from the code era of movies. He said they dealt with the Hays Commission and the Catholic Legion of Decency by including a risque scene in the preliminary cuts they submitted. They censors would reject them, and they'd resubmit with the scenes cut.

[tetrep]

Are you implying that SpaceX purposefully failed in order to give the FCC something to critique?