Ask HN: I'm way too shy, please help - <AUTHOR> I'm genuinely shy.
I stopped playing the guitar because I was too shy to play in public. I couldn't even play for ONE other person. I wrote some songs and publicized them...in forums, to strangers, not to people I knew.
I quit blogging because I just wouldn't tell people that I had a blog. I think I'm kind of scared to expose my work or something.
Needless to say, if I had an app or even started a business, it'd be hell for me to advertise it. I really can't picture me trying to convince someone to use my product; if a cousin asked me what it does, I'd start to stutter.
This applies to live interactions, not stuff like email, forums or HN. I'd have no problem in showing you guys my work and asking for comments and reviews.
What can I do? I think starting a blog again and telling people about it would be a good way to start, because it'd expose my work without me feeling intimidated by the presence of someone else. Would you agree? <comment><USER2> No I wouldn't.

Question one, are you more attached to your self image as someone who has a real problem with shyness or are you more attached to the idea that you need to solve this problem for real ?

Are you serious about overcoming it ?

If you are, what you need to do is to take steps, possibly very small steps, every day, to push yourself past your comfort zone and be around other people and overcome your shyness.

There is no knowledge that will help you, you cannot read, think, research or write your way out of it, you can only practice and train your way out of it.

\- Every day this week I will smile at a stranger. Then smile at two a day, then ten. \- Every day I will say 'hello' to people as I pass them and smile. \- When I deal with a cashier or serving person I will say "Thanks, you having a good day ?" I will practice small talk.

Action not thought will help you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, the smiling to strangers thing sounds like It'll help, thanks for that.

Here's another one I came up with: I live in a 12-store building where 44 families live. I will say hi and bye to everyone that shares the elevator with me instead of looking at my shoes and pretend they are not there. And I will smile while doing so.

<comment><USER3> Saying Hi and Bye is a great idea to get you started, because it will do two things for you:

1) They might respond well to you, which can boost your confidence.

2) They look at you like you're a weirdo - this might seem bad, but it's really a good thing because you will teach yourself that sometimes, there's nothing wrong with you, and it's the other person that has an attitude problem!

Good luck, and please report back to let us all know how you get on :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perform.

I used to be very shy, so much that I wasn't even able to talk to girls (yes, like the guy in TBBT) and I was always afraid of doing something seemingly embarrassing even if it was not. I cannot even make anything ressembling a dance because I was convinced that people will laugh at me.

One day I realized that this was ridiculous so I've started fighting my shyness one baby step at a time. First, I've started wearing sunglasses which I've used consider pretty lame. I was prepared to be mocked out by people but I noticed that nobody actually care!

Then I got my first girlfriend which dumped me after one month. I was so angry that I went to this party acting like a douche and I got 3 numbers from pretty girls.

So I got the keyword is 'acting'. I didn't like acting as a douche though, so I keep being pretty shy.

Well, like seven years ago I've started playing in a christian ska band. What I did then was this: I will disguise myself as a rudeboy with sunglasses and a hat and a checkboard tie so nobody could recognize me and then I will 'act' as a ska rockstar. That worked pretty well, one year later I was dancing like crazy at the stage and three years later I even got some personal fans :D

Man, being a rockstar even a completely-obscure one is awesome.

So my advice are this two things: 1) Do one little ridicule thing at a time and 2) perform.

So when you want to play the guitar don't do it as yourself. Grab some 70's rockstar wardrobe and act like one. For some strange reason rockstars don't get laughed at. So act as one.

I've translated succesfully this approach to other areas of my life. Two years ago I got invited to give a talk in the first big web conference in Mexico. I was completely nervous but I knew that this was a turning point for my career so I did it.

I watched a lot of talk videos on the web and when I finally got into the stage I stop being myself and acted like a mix between Jason Fried, Gary V and Troy Mclure (the guy from the simpsons). It's funny but acting like an arrogant star boost your confidence.

I'm not saying that it works for everybody, just that it worked for me. I'm still not Gary V but at least I'm not Raj Koothrappali.

<comment><USER5> Totally agree - you'll find that people who know you will expect you to act a certain way. And if they've always known you to be the shy person who doesn't speak out then thats how you'll behave (I mean they're friends with 'old' you not 'new' you right?) What you've got to realise though is that people actually don't mind when people act a bit unusually - especially if its 'baby steps' like you suggest.

And the part about playing the rockstar role approaches the problem from a different angle - go and see some people who don't know you as 'old shy person' and instead see you based on their first impression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Be careful of advice involving putting yourself in stressful situations, eg public speaking classes, improv, talking to strangers, approaching women, etc.

Shyness is a generally a combination of the emotional (painful memories of embarrassing/humiliating situations) and the physiological (neurological stress & oversensitivity). These two aspects can influence each other, making the situation steadily worse as you pass through life, and can push you to breaking point if you can't work out how to escape the cycle.

If you have become hypersensitive to criticism or the feeling of embarrassment, that's a real physiological condition, and deliberately invoking this sensation through "fear conquering" exercises can make the situation worse - ie, add to the pile of painful memories and exert further physiological strain on your body.

There's a bunch of ways you can make your nervous system more robust, through nutrition (food+supplements), physical health & fitness, and crucially, "letting go" of painful memories (it seems wacky, but many people find "tapping" or EFT to be really effective).

Over time, this can enable you to be more relaxed and confident.

If you're going to do anything to challenge yourself, make sure you're taking small incremental steps. It's important to get yourself on a success trajectory, where each day or each week you're getting a little better than the last, and never suffering a major fall or setback. Minor setbacks are OK, as long as they're not too painful they'll become a way of figuring out when you're going right or wrong.

I'm aware some of this stuff may sound absurd, but it's based on my own experience, which includes learning that common "wisdom" about this stuff, including conventional advice from mental health "professionals", is ineffective at best and terribly damaging at worst.

The good news is you really can overcome the difficulty you find yourself in, and life can be far more enjoyable than you ever imagined possible.

If you want any more advice, email me: tom.howard/gmail.

</comment><comment><USER7> hey ptn,

What are you afraid of that makes you so shy ?

People rejecting you or ridiculing you ?

Is there something in your past that made you decide to 'play it safe' ?

The instrument thing I can completely relate to, I used to play the saxophone (I managed to blow a small hole in one lung so not any more), and I really didn't dare to play it in front of others, I felt completely naked doing that.

And then one day a guy I knew in Amsterdam changed that, he played as well and said, come, the weather is good, let's go outside and play. He was _way_ better than I was and there was no way I was going to be caught dead playing out in the street (Amsterdam, so you're pretty much assured an audience).

But he kept on needling me until I gave in, one song only. So we went out and played that one song. One song became 10 and before long I really enjoyed it, even if I never played outside again I did lose my shyness about that.

With people in conversation it is a different thing, writing is a lot easier than speaking because when you write you can re-read your words before you click that 'submit' or 'reply' button and that gives you some time to get your thoughts in proper order.

People that are good at 'thinking on their feet' usually have less of a problem with interacting with others than those that need to think for a bit.

I really suggest you read darkxanthos' blog posts about all this, he has a way with words that I can't hope to match and his experiences are chronicled in a way that you actually get something from it that you can use.

There is this song called 'sunscreen', one line in it stands out for me: Do something that scares you every day.

best of luck!

Jacques

<comment><AUTHOR> People don't ridicule me _now_ , but they used to, up until I was 16 or so. That's probably it.

<comment><USER7> Ok. So, here is my take on that:

Kids are cruel, but they grow up to become adults and those adults _can_ be just as cruel, only they're more clever about it. It never goes away, unfortunately. Pettiness seems to be somehow part and parcel of groups of people.

You have to have a fairly tough skin to get around, and one of the things that being shy is a real problem with is that it opens you up to people that 'use' you simply by being normal to you, they might gain an edge that way.

I've been on the receiving side of that twice, always looking for that pat on the head or if someone is simply nice to me I'll nearly kill myself to please them. It's a weak point in my character.

The cruelty you can learn to deal with, the other part I'm not so sure. Every time something like that happens it dents my self confidence for years.

Still, like that famous ancient story, this too shall pass, and in the end whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, sometimes much stronger.

I'm going to make a really weird suggestion: forget about a startup or something like that for now, go and do some volunteer work for a while.

It's two birds with one stone, it will have a real and measurably positive impact on peoples lives which will help you to build confidence and it will cure your shyness like nothing else can because it reverses the usual role patterns that you fall in to.

A friend of mine from Canada did that in order to find a way to deal with the aftermath of a car accident she was in, it worked very well for her, I figure it should help you deal with your shyness for much the same reasons.

There are always people below you on the ladder, simply being confronted with a lot of real world hardship will help to give you the tools with which to deal with your own, and will put you in a position of having to deal with people on a daily basis.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you nailed it with the volunteering work. That sure sounds like it would help, it would really get my out of my comfort zone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're young, get a job at a help desk or tech customer support. It will work wonders, trust me.

<comment><USER9> actually, it'll only make you a cynic and a misanthropist.

<comment><USER10> That's a choice you make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll tell you a little about myself, hopefully my history regarding shyness can help you.

I used to be shy, at school, around friends, even at home (outside of my parents and siblings). Until I was chosen to be one of the lead characters at a school play, which I was pretty much forced to be a part of. I had a stomach ache to the point that I couldn't stand up straight, I was so scared. Somehow though, I was able to recite the lines properly. Thereafter I was complimented so much by so many different people, even people I didn't know (such as other actor's parents), that I was able to gain self confidence and thought that I was truly a great actor who can maybe become one in the future. This play was a turning point in my life, because to this day, I'm not shy, and I know I'm not a very good actor. The worst that could have happened at this play was that I wouldn't be complimented (no way anyone would insult my skills, as it's not expected of a student to be good, let alone amazing). In hindsight, it was worth the shot for a possible less shy future.

As a teenager I had quite a bit of acne, and that caused low self-confidence in me for a while. How I got over it was simple, yet accidental (or subconscious, as there is no way I would have thought of doing this on purpose at that time): overt confidence display. Basically, act extremely self confident, and do things that even the bullies in class wouldn't dare to do. This causes people to look at you in a more respectful way (at least in school, but with some modifications can be applied elsewhere), one in which they stop seeing your face, but what you've done, your history, your "self- confidence", etc. It's kind of like being a fat ugly rock star or famous actor/celebrity/CEO. Overt self-confidence display can lead to really bad behavior though, which I was able to control, but try to keep that in mind.

Currently, I've removed the "overt" part from "overt confidence display." However, it was necessary at first, to make as strong of a first impression as possible.

In theater, they teach actors to consider the audience members as donkeys or some other animal sitting down and watching them, to create a less traumatizing experience. Try to do something similar when you play the guitar, or talk to someone. Who are they to cause you to fumble or stutter or cause anxiety? No matter who they really are, they're no one to cause any of those symptoms.

Sorry about the long essay.

<comment><USER12> Being forced into doing drama also changed my entire life. I cannot recommend it enough. I was relatively talentless and put in the back of the chorus (sang happy birthday during tryouts for a summer musical), but that only gave me more time to socialize with drama people, who are completely different from my close, safe group of friends at the time.

The drama crowd taught me how to relax, how to enjoy life, and how to speak my mind amongst chaos.

It was my mother who forced me to try out (literally threatened me). I was so angry at her for making me do it and so very thankful every day after for having such a life changing experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Find a good therapist (psychologist) to talk to about this. Working through shyness will be a long process, and having a smart caring person to coach you through it will be a big help. Therapists are people who are genuinely interested in helping people in this way, and they have been developing and honing the relevant set of skills. I'd say it's important to find someone who works well for you and your personality, so maybe it would help to talk to a few to see who you have the best rapport/connection with.

<comment><USER14> I second this. If your shyness is bad enough that it seriously, negatively affects your life, consider talking to a psychologist. Speaking from personal experience, it can help. There's no shame in it. A psychologist offers a non- judgmental, safe atmosphere to talk to someone well-versed in the kinds of problems you're facing. Social anxiety is a much more common problem than most people would guess, and there are ways of thinking and habits you can form that can help you overcome it.

Some people can overcome these things without help, of course, and more power to them. Just another option to consider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hi ptn, I would recommend two books for you: The Places that Scare You, by Pema Chodron, and How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. If you send me your details I can send the books your way (my email is in my profile). Alternatively, you could add those books to an amazon.com wish list and I could get them for you that way. I wish I could write more about why I'd recommend those books, but I have to get to work :)

Good luck, buddy.

</comment><comment><USER16> Everything becomes easier the more you do it. If you're shy, there is an easy way to get over it: break it into component parts (talking to people, going new places etc). The break each part into steps that you can take. For example, talking to people an easy way to start is to talk to fruit sellers about their fruit, then asking for advice on clothes and so on. Now, everyday make it a mission to go and conquer one level of it til you are comfortable with that. Then move to the next level.

The way I am advocating is slow working, but it's easy to do and it changes the very fundamentals of who you are.

Also travel to other cities alone and just walk around and discover the city. Being in a new environment will open you up to being more accepting of things you don't know or understand.

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to be shy and have a bit of a speech impediment. To get over it, I joined the forensics club (competitive public speaking). It is amazing how much that has helped me over the years. ("Presenting my new idea to the CEO? Pfft, just another speech. Need a joke for the intro... always start with a joke for the intro...")

If you're still in school, I recommend that or debate. If you're not, I hear Toastmasters is pretty decent.

</comment><comment><USER18> Have you tried a job in retail? I did computer sales for a while and I know it sucks but it did help me by forcing human interaction in mass numbers. The company was bad, but it was good on a few fronts: coworkers were generally interesting to talk to, I got a part time job on the side from a customer that gave me a lot of experience, I started a company with a few coworkers doing computer networking which afforded me some interesting experiences. Overall it was a net win.

This _will_ get you practice in human interaction which is invaluable.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great suggestions here. I'd also suggest improv classes or acting classes. Most large cities have improv classes of some form, and your local community college is bound to have some acting classes. They are a great way to get in front of people in a controlled setting, and try to do weird things. After pretending to be an elephant in front of an acting class every week for 3 months, it's amazing how much easier it is to talk with a stranger about your product.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was actually considering the same thing. This does seem like a big step, so it's like step 2 or 3 of the plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I used to be painfully shy too, but i started to get much better when i realised that were many other people who had the same problem.

Some things i have learned that sometimes it can come down to self-esteem, so if you solve that problem you've got most of it covered. I dont know if you are male or female, but there is video series on youtube by David DeAngelo (its a little crude) caled "On being a man", its worth watching. Just as a "gaining insight" exercise. I wouldnt take the whole thing literally, but it helps.

Other than that, i agree with the other commenter that the more you do something the better you get it. Start with the slightly easier things first and then start pushing yourself further.

Also, get a pen and paper and for each thing that painfully frightens you list down a few reasons as to why it frightens you, i.e. worst case scenario, and then list why the worst case scenario itself frightens you and keep extrapolating that back as much as you can. that REALLY helps (hope it makes sense, email or skype me if you want to know more). (firstname.lastname@example.com) skype: krmmalik

and lastly there's a book called "Feel the fear and do it anyway" by Susan Jeffers. Its worth reading.

(sorry for the information overload, just take one thing at a time)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A very big "thank you" to everyone that posted a reply. There are true gold mines here, and every bit helps.

</comment><comment><USER21> Find your local Toastmasters chapter. The pitch is to learn how to become a better public speaker and leader; everyone I've ever known that's been a part of it has raved about how it rounded off their shy edges and made them massively more confident. They'll make you uncomfortable as hell, but just remember that everyone else is there for the same reason to some degree.

</comment><comment><USER22> Practice practice practice. Like anything else you get better by trying (and occasionally failing). You have to put yourself out there to overcome shyness, leaving your comfort zone. There is no switch to flick that makes it go away. I'm not much for formal education, but one thing it has given me is required presentations. With a few very painful public speaking experiences under my belt I am far less scared of it because I know I am getting better. At some point you just have to say "fuck it" and do it. No pain no gain.

Maybe this is a reach, but I'll use the Woz as an example. When he was making the Apple I doubt very much he was capable of managing a coherent conversation. He was the quintessential socially inept nerd. 30 years later he's still no Jobs, but he can give a decent interview. I suppose it helps having "fuck you" money, but really he's just had a couple decades of practice.

</comment><comment><USER23> It helps to do something... a little more mundane. No one goes around casually talking about their complicated lives (of which both guitars and blogs fall).

For example, I was cleaning up my backyard today (something mundane) and saw that some flowers had sprouted. I took a picture and posted it on Facebook exclaiming that Spring was here (again, something mundane) and when I go into work tomorrow I'm going to boast about the newfound glory of Spring to every single person I see.

You might take up a simple hobby like running (mundane), but it's something you can easily talk about. "I went for a run today. It was so nice out." Simple. If they're interested, you can fill in some more details about how you now have shin splints or that you stepped in a puddle. If they're not interested, no big deal. You had some top-notch small talk.

</comment><comment><USER24> ptn, you may be afraid of rejection.

Maybe you could start by telling yourself that whenever you are too worried about someone's opinion, you are in fact saying "S/He is more important than me".

I am a very shy person. I fear others' opinion. So I turned my fear into a game. For example If I go out, I only talk to girls that intimidate me. During meetings I talk the least, but I take notes, write my talking points before speaking.

In other cases I literally imagine myself standing on the side watching me talk to people. I think this is not me, I am over there, watching my clone do this.

The most extreme I went was having a goal to say hello and smile at anyone I saw in a day (at the store, bank, work, street, etc...). Then I went further and chatted with at least 1 stranger everyday.

Take it as a game. It will be fun and soon you will start not to care.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fear of rejection is definitely a component here. Fear of failure is another one.

<comment><USER25> well, they say the best way to conquer your fears is to face them. my suggestion: get embarrassed. fail.

it's a funny thing, fear. fears always make things seem worse than they are. i think you should do something that would normally embarrass you, and when you are done review what happened as a result. then do it again. each time you get in that situation you come to grips with the totality of your fear, and each time you walk away from it you become that much better at dealing with it.

i think the thing to keep in mind is that yes, you will fail. yes you will get embarrassed. but after going through it you will learn how to deal with it. i'll bet you after the 50th time playing guitar in public or singing all your fears would be gone. maybe you can extend that to other parts of your life too?

i also agree with looking at people in the eyes, smiling and saying hello whenever you pass. it shows confidence and it trains you to cope with people's rejection should they not smile back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Get out and find people a bit like yourself. My advice: Find a hackerspace where you can collaborate with people in person. You can start by helping them, or giving them input without exposing your work all at once. You'll be around people who understand your type, and some of them will likely be shy as well. Many of the meetings at these places are not overwhelmingly crowded, but there are enough people there that you can lurk if you want to. As you get more comfortable with the people, you'll find it easier to share. Eventually, you might even give a presentation with another member, to the group. Or maybe you'll give a presentation yourself. You'll be able to practice your interpersonal skills on people who won't judge you very harshly.

<comment><AUTHOR> You just wrote a description of my job. I only got there 6 weeks ago, so I haven't had the chance to do all that yet, but I will take the first chance I get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Either you are too shy, and the usual prescription of go out there and overcome it isn't going to work. I was painfully shy when I was younger, and it took determined and sustained effort to overcome it. Even today, after years of this, it often takes a moment of deliberate effort for me to talk to a stranger. At parties, I am often one of the people holding up the wall.

It's clear, however, that that will not work for a small number of people, and if you are one of them, then you must consider counselling/therapy. For a really small number, drugs are called for. If you find that a determined effort to be outgoing is not possible/helpful, then I seriously encourage you to seek out the right type of counsellor.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't have a problem as severe as yours, but I was able to reduce my shyness by forcing myself to go through with situations that I was afraid of. It was sort of like jumping into a cold pool. Once you're in the water it is not as unpleasant as your fear told you it would be. And once you learn that, it gets easier to jump in the pool the next time.

It's also something you can't learn by thinking about, or by reading advice. You have to learn by doing.

But honestly, I'm not that shy of a person. I'm only shy in certain situations. So I'm not sure how much it will help you.

</comment><comment><USER29> Exercise. Heavily.

The best time of my life was the fall after a summer of cycling every day. I gained several (real) new friends. I started participating in intra-mural sports, at which I was actually good. (Some quite negative "jock attitudes" had kept me away from organized sports in primary and secondary school.) I reconsidered my education and began to see past all the "don't do that" advice towards a course of pursuing what actually interested me.

There's a lot more to this, especially as researchers look at and measure various biological changes and effects, than just a one liner. But to summarize: When you feel better, you feel better about yourself, and, feeling better about yourself, you approach others on a more equal footing.

I was cycling 2 - 3 hours a day. It may not require this much activity, but I am talking about more than a 15 or 30 minute workout. (Well, maybe a heavy 30 minute routine would suffice. Others might have more to contribute in the way of details.)

P.S. I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall some good threads on this (both shyness and exercise, and the union of the two topics) back in the "early days" of HN. Unfortunately, I don't have references at hand, but a look through

<http://searchyc.com/>

<http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>

might turn some up.

</comment><comment><USER30> Here is a really great blog by someone who made it into a game, with challenges for himself and simple stages. Maybe you can find some inspiration through his posts:

<http://socialskydivingwithjustin.posterous.com/>

Also, a trick that I use to practice new ideas is to go into places where I don't know a single person. Then, I can try all kinds of crazy things, knowing that I'll never see any of the people again :)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Also, a trick that I use to practice new ideas is to go into places where I > don't know a single person. Then, I can try all kinds of crazy things, > knowing that I'll never see any of the people again :)

That's why I want to move to the valley to do my startup. I couldn't do it here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It was mentioned already and I'd like to re-emphasize :

Talk to a good psychologist or psychiatrist and consider medication for a limited time at least.

I was the same. No problems with friends, colleagues or on the internet, but walking into a bar or into a party would frighten the holy crap out of me.

Cognitive therapy in combination with Effexor (Efexor herearound) helped me a hell of a lot. It's basically an antidepressant, which is also indicated for Social Anxiety Disorder in a relatively low dosis and in the extended release version. There may be others, but this worked pretty good for me.

A major disclaimer :

Although I seem to recognize a lot of the symptoms that I had (sometimes have, but this is much rarer now) I am not a physician or even a psychologist. Anecdotal experience may be valid in my case, but each person is different and what works for one, may be a side effect ladden horror for others. Before you even consider altering your brain chemistry (which I don't think is inherently wrong and meds are pretty subtle nowadays) you must discuss this with a professional, period.

In any case: I _guarantee_ that you can do something about it. it may need work and a professional to get there, but you can do it.

Good luck on your journey

</comment><comment><USER32> I used to be pretty shy myself. I would say to some degree I still am, but when necessary I am able to overcome that.

I can say a few things that helped me a long the way. First off though, on the computer you feel "shielded" from reality. Even if you showed me your blog, and I told you it was horrible, I still have no clue who you are, so you feel a little more safe. So having the blog and showing it to people that do actually know you might help a bit, but I think this all starts in "public."

I took a speech class in college. I was absolutely terrified that I was going to have to take this class, because all throughout high school I had to do speeches for certain classes and it was always a headache. However, college was far more different. They allowed me to give speeches on topics that I was already interested in. Being interested in the topic made things a lot easier. I would say that speech class didn't help immediately, but in the long run it was a big help.

I also had a bunch of customer service style jobs early in life that required me to interact with the public...I think these early face-to-face jobs helped a lot.

Good luck to you!

</comment><comment><USER33> I am wondering if you have a keen sense of smell. Since it is in person but not online, I would guess there is something physiological involved. Anecdotally, my son is very strongly impacted by the feelings and reactions of people around him. He also has a keen sense of smell. I suspect the two things are related since pheromones are also picked up by the nose (olfactory).

I was bedridden at one time and largely housebound for a long time. During that time, I spent a lot of time online. Getting out into the world again and around people was a headtrip. I have found that it is much easier to drop someone a polite note, send them an email, etc in order to talk about difficult subjects because it removes that physiological component. If they have a strong negative initial reaction, I am not exposed to it. They can take time to calm down and compose themselves before replying, etc. If handled properly, it can do a lot to defuse potentially highly charged situations.

Yes, start a blog again and do more stuff online. You might consider planning a web-based business or project.

</comment><comment><USER34> I heard somewhere that people's #1 fear is public speaking (#2 being death). So I certainly don't think your alone.

Simply put, I'd like to emphasize that the problem is entirely within you. This can all change without the action (or awareness) of _any_ other people. You simply have to ask yourself -- why is it that I allow other people's opinion of me to influence what I think about myself? Why is my self-image tied up in the opinion of others?

I used to struggle with this (in middle school) until I realized that other people's behavior is governed entirely by their own problems, their own insecurities and concerns -- so their reaction to you has _very_ little to do with you, and a whole LOT to do with them. So not only is it not healthy, it is ILLOGICAL to allow others' opinions to sway you at all!

Meditate on this when these feelings start to paralyze you. Remember that plenty of great work was ridiculed and derided when it was first accepted -- think about Galileo! No matter how bad the publicly responds to whatever you show it, it will likely not be as bad as it was for Galileo. :)

</comment><comment><USER35> The mind works with automatisms and reflexes. They condition the way you interpret any situation, and the emotion you feel because of this interpretation. The key is to become aware of these mechanisms: don't let them control you.

In your daily-life, inevitably you will interact with other people. At this moment, there might be a little voice in your head (litteraly) saying "Don't do this. It's dangerous. Remember that time..." + flash images of painful past situations. It's your instinct, acting to protect you. The problem is the association you made between people interaction and pain (probably because of a difficult childhood). You need to fix this.

Actually there might be several broken mechanisms acting in different situations.: don't try to fix them all at the same time. Focus on each one independently, then "force" it as much as possible to replace the bad behavior by the behavior you want. It will be hard at the beginning, then easier.

A psychologist might help you identify these broken mechanisms in your daily life. But the key is to gain awareness of them, acting in your head. Some of them could be:

\- taboo: being shy or feeling uncomfortable is not a taboo. Talk about it. Everyone enjoy talking about what they are concerned about. This is your life, so talk about it. People will actually appreciate knowing you better, and you might be amazed to see how many people feel the same.

\- judgment: people are not judging you all the time. Most of the time, they don't care about you. Don't think anything you do will be evaluated, judged, and blamed.

\- perfection: nobody is perfect. Why would you? People learn from failures. If they don't fail, they don't evolve. Don't feel shameful to ask for help. It's very positive.

\- right: you have the right to exist. You have to right to make suggestions. You have the right to decline others' suggestions.

It's a long road, but it's worth it. Hang on!

</comment><comment><USER36> "I wrote some songs and publicized them...in forums, to strangers, not to people I knew."

This just made me think, perhaps you should simply hang out on ChatRoulette for a while :-) (Haven't tried it myself).

But seriously, I think just practice. I recently read one of the "The Game" books out of curiosity (about the pickup artists, I read "The Mystery Method"). Not sure if I like it, but one thing stood out: in their seminars, they make people go into night clubs and chat up at least 10 women per night (or was it even more, don't remember for sure). in other words, they simply practice a lot.

I know this is not (just) about talking to women, but I think in general anxiety really can be overcome with practice. Take smaller steps, though - playing your music in front of an audience is comparatively huge. One thing I did is for a while ask a question at almost every conference/public talk I went to. I felt a difference very quickly.

</comment><comment><USER37> I divide activities into two categories: those I'm supposed to be good at, and those I'm not. For instance, I'm fairly articulate and knowledgeable about certain subjects, so I should be able to get up and explain/present them to other people. Whereas, I'm a poor guitar player, lack 'rock star looks' and have got a weak singing voice, so performing music is probably not my forte. I find I continually grow in confidence with the former activity, and just don't attempt the latter activity (or have need to attempt it).

Of course there will be some things I need to do but am still bad at. Still working on that one! (acquiring more skills would always help though. don't think of 'social skills,' think of things like 'sense of humour' that you can improve).

</comment><comment><USER38> Countdown to failure. Make it into a game.

Rookie salesmen - the best instruction they receive is not: go and get 10 sales. The best instruction they receive is: go and get 30 Nos.

The goal of 30 Nos means they won't give up before that even if they face a lot of shit.

A lot of pickup artists do this too. They instruct people to go and approach as many girls as they can with a made up opening line before they are rebuked a 100 times.

Counting down to failure works better in making sure you don't give up before you can raise your confidence level.

Action Summary:

Figure out what you consider your failure point.

Come up with a number. You need to reach your failure point that many times.

Eg: It could be 10 people asking you to stop playing your guitar within 2 minutes of you starting to play.

</comment><comment><USER39> I would have considered myself shy in the past and one of the rationalizations that helped me get over being shy is that everyone projects how they would react and feel on other people.

Do you judge others work or blogs harshly? Are you judgmental of others opening themselves up and putting their work and thoughts out in public? I'd say the first step is making sure that you are not judgmental of others putting themselves out there and in turn you'll realize the best people (and the only ones you should care about imho) are the ones that aren't judgmental and embrace people sharing what they are thinking and realize its tough to have brilliant ideas all the time.

</comment><comment><USER40> Medication worked wonders for me.

I had anxiety problems that were crippling my life. Two years ago I was prescribed Paroxetin. The changes it has done me for are great. I sleep much better. I'm not so irritable. I don't worry so much about failure and what other people think. I am far more open about my life, even with strangers, as readers of my blog know.

A pleasant side-effect is that I can coolly walk into a crowded room or bar. I used to be close to panic in this situation. Last Saturday night I started a random conversation with two girls in a local bar and talked to them for a couple of hours. And if they had dissed me - I wouldn't have cared.

The past was not like this for me.

</comment><comment><USER41> I used to be awkward, then I realized that by talking to people when I feel that way I can transfer my awkwardness to them, and split between the two of us its not so bad. The shyness comes from trying to handle it all on your own.

</comment><comment><USER42> I used to be a lot like that, and I worked on changing it. So that's my number 1 piece of advice -- work on changing what you want to change. Work on the big things as well as the little things.

I used to put my head down when passing people, to avoid eye contact. Silly as it sounds, I was able to help with that by humming the Argent song "Hold Your Head Up" in my head when passing people.

Another thing I did was to put myself in situations where I HAD to interact with other people. Sometimes this worked, and sometimes it didn't. I found that bars didn't work -- I'd mostly just stand there by myself. Then I'd go home and feel like a failure. (Note that I felt like a failure for NOT putting myself out there and talking to people. To me, that's more regrettable than anything stupid I might have done.)

Joining some clubs where I had an interest helped a lot. At first I just took it in. Then I started offering input during discussions. Eventually, I got to the point where I gave presentations in front of the group, and even larger groups. Now I also run the group (a local LUG). I wrote myself some tips on giving presentations, as well as for others, to share what I learned. My best tip to stop being nervous in this situation is: "Remember that the audience members are just like you, and are interested in what you have to say."

Leverage what you're good at to improve the things that you're not good at. For example, as I said, I was terrible at bars. But I'm good at writing -- and conversation once I know people. So I found that online dating worked really well for me. I got to meet people, but only after I got them interested in me from our written exchanges. At this point, I'd be more comfortable talking to them in person.

Another thing you can do is latch onto a friend that's more outgoing. Make sure it's someone who won't push you out of your comfort zone too far too fast. But have them take you places where you can meet people. They can introduce you and get the conversation started.

Eventually, you'll get to a tipping point where you realize that "failing" isn't so bad, and that "failures" are just learning experiences. Then you'll be able to say "what the heck" and not care so much about what other people think.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER43> with respect to a blog, create a fresh anonymous online identity, and go from there. no need to show it to people you know. let it continue to be closed off so that you can comfortably show off your work. include it on resumes only if it is applicable, where you can feel more comfort in the fact that you're putting a whole lot of yourself out on the line and that adding the blog is just a drop in the bucket.

with respect to app/business, find a partner who is willing to be the face of the company, and operate behind them. no one really has to know that you're supplying the code.

</comment><comment><USER44> @ptn ... quote 'oprah an't that beautiful either' and she got her own show. this an't going to work if you r not going to get out of your comfort zone.

upside, posting a Ask HN is a good stand. Try make a video next.

</comment><comment><USER45> Not directly related to shyness but I think this video might possibly help:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_g...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success.html)

I think it's important to remember that most people are insecure in some way, it's just that different people show it differently. So maybe the loud extroverted guy is really scared to.

Good luck with stuff, work on it and you will improve. This is not something you're stuck with, it's just a hard work to sort it out.

</comment><comment><USER46> I used to be very shy. Not any more. I still don't like crowds, and I prefer to be with one or two people - but I can make a speech for five or five hundred persons, who usually tell afterwards that it was the best part of their day - or the whole week. What helped:

I went to a course in our university, "confidence as presenter" (bad translation of the name, sorry). The teacher was excellent, and I guess that is what really is what counts.

So, my advice would be: go to some course about communications or such, but make sure that the teacher is excellent.

</comment><comment><USER47> I used to by shy, then I fell in love.

In past, I would fear what others would think of me, which made me very shy. When I fell in love I only cared about what my love interest would think. Obviously I was even more shy around her, so that relationship didn't work out. But in the meantime I didn't care anymore what others would think, this got me into a positive feedback loop and fixed my shyness enough to no longer be a problem.

Not something you can easily trigger, but you need to find some way to get into that positive feedback loop.

</comment><comment><USER48> There is some good comments here about practicing, the trick is to find what works for you.

Make a list of small things you think you can try. Try them. If one doesn't work for you that's ok, write down what you learn from it not working. Maybe you can try it a bit differently next time, or try something else.

Just keep at it, it usually takes a few missteps to learn new things so don't worry about it. That's part of learning.

Good luck!

<comment><USER48> Oh another good trick regarding shyness is to focus on your motive. Why be fearful if you are acting with the other persons interests at heart. Try doing things for others, like smile to make them happier.

A lot of people are in the same boat as you, why should you all be miserable :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> 99% of people are worrying about what other people think of them. People try to hide it in different ways - saying too little, saying too much, hiding from the world, overexposing themselves.

just realize that most people are so busy caring about what other people think of them they don't really care much about how you come across.

why do you care what other people think? what's your answer to that question.

</comment><comment><USER50> It'll get better.

1\. Yes, practice little things.

2\. Yes, you'll die, so don't focus only on the shyness.

3\. Don't worry, it'll get better with age (age brings practice and confidence), and although you'll likely always have some level of shyness, it will get to the level where your shyness is charming, and just an aspect of your personality. Nothing wrong with that.

</comment><comment><USER51> Don't take life too seriously--you're not going to make it out alive anyway.

Edit: or what Anonjon said

</comment><comment><USER52> You might find the book "The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You" by Elaine Aron helpful. Shyness isn't the same as being highly sensitive, but sensitive people are often considered shy.

</comment><comment><USER53> Haven't read the article, I just like the picture...

[http://plpatterns.com/post/307982918/its-hard-to-change-a- li...](http://plpatterns.com/post/307982918/its-hard-to-change-a-little-its- much-easier-to)

</comment><comment><USER54> I enjoyed learning salsa dancing a lot, and it helped my confidence, and ability to just approach people (well, girls, specifically). Plus, it's actually fun. My wife and I still go occasionally, these days:-)

</comment><comment><USER27> Either you are too shy, and the usual prescription of go out there and overcome it isn't going to work. I was painfully shy when I was younger, and it took determined and sustained effort to overcome it. Even today, after years of this, it often takes a moment of deliberate effort for me to talk to a stranger. At parties, I am often one of the people holding up the wall.

It's clear, however, that that will not work for a small number of people, and if you are one of them, then you must consider counselling/therapy. For a really small number, drugs are called for. If you find that a determined effort to be outgoing is not possible/helpful, then I seriously encourage you to seek out the right type of counsellor.

</comment><comment><USER55> Try acting or locution classes. Actors do silly exercises to take away the scenic fear. If you have been a dog or a tree in front of several people, then being human seem a lot easier.

</comment><comment><USER56> Just keep in mind that you are going to die eventually, and that life is short, so it will be relatively soon.

There's so few ways that embarrassment will kill you but there's many ways that being really really alone like that will kill you.

Worst thing happens is you get laughed at, best thing happens is something really good. So focus on the really good. laughed at isn't anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> That one was pretty drastic, but very true. Thanks for the advice.

<comment><USER57> Sounds like you just need to man up and grow a pair. Honestly. If you think what he said was "harsh", then you're in for an interesting world. At some point in my life... I think it was the start of my senior high school year, I just became comfortable and cool with myself. I started not caring about what others thought, and just did what made me happy. I made new friends, ditched old ones, and started my career. Confidence in yourself is the best thing you can have. As soon as I graduated high school I moved to Hawaii to work for a new startup, and haven't looked back. Live life from the perspective of "will I regret _not_ doing this?" rather than "will I regret doing this?".

Also, at the chance of coming off as cheesy... think about the legacy that you want to leave for yourself. What are people going to say at your funeral? What will your tombstone read? What can you surround yourself with so that every day that you wake up in the morning, you're excited to get at it and live it? I think that's where true happiness comes from, and that's what truly matters in life :) </end-hallmark-card>

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't think it was harsh, but "A: I'm shy. B: You are gonna die! Don't be." really caught me off guard.

I can totally see your point and agree completely. My legacy is something I think about constantly.

When I die, I want to say "FUCK YEAH! Let's do that again!", not "Yeah I felt safe".

<comment><USER58> Put yourself in embarrassing situations. Go to a karoake night and "sing" spoken word style, hopefully off key, the great part is this isn't hard for most people. Take the guitar to some kind of open mic night and absolutely bomb, make sure it's tuned wrong before even going on stage.

Go with the intention of being bad.

After that you'll get over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Don't want this to come off rude, but here's my tip: Get outside.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do go outside. Parties, bars, the casual get-together. No problem meeting new people. Wanna go grab a beer? :-)

<comment><USER60> Is it possible that the actual problem is fear of failure, and/or fear of mediocrity, rather than shyness per se?

When you meet new people, do you show them a different you, one who doesn't write songs or think about writing apps or starting businesses? One who is safe from criticism, because he/she doesn't do anything that would be worth criticising?

The two things are not necessarily related, but I've come to see both of them in myself. For a long time I've had two very different sets of thoughts and activities, internal ones that I didn't tell people about and external ones that I did. I convinced myself that noone IRL was interested in the first set of stuff (projects, niche interests, thought experiments) so I just kept it all to myself, sharing it online or (mostly) not at all. It's only recently that I'm starting to let more of that out, overcoming the fear of either boring people, sounding silly, or being ridiculed.

Things that have helped me have been:

\- Getting involved with a group of people (IRL) who are interested in the same things. In my case it's been helping found a Hackerspace, but in your case music could be an equally good outlet and support group. This has helped me get used to talking about those things, and it's helped me feel more legitimate about these things being of interest and worth to other people, and not lame/useless/boring.

\- Social media. It's convenient to be able to occasionally give notice of your thoughts and activities to a fairly wide group of people you know in person, without any obligation for them to respond if they don't want to or are not interested. I've been surprised at how many people have shown interest (both online and offline in social situations), though.

I still have a fair way to go. For example, I created a blog to help encourage me to push projects through to completion (or failure) instead of abandoning them early on. However, I haven't written up any of the things that I'm working on yet, instead I can always rationalise an excuse about "no time to write about it" or "not quite good enough for public consumption yet".

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow...that's exactly the case. I have felt for a long time that I am two _very_ different guys, one when I'm alone, my true self, and the one that meets people and doesn't tell anything about the other one, actively hiding him. I now see that the reason is that I don't want to give others a chance to criticize me.

<comment><USER60> I thought you sounded a bit like me in the OP. :).

From the vague amount of pop psychology that I know, the "two different guys" is the hallmark of an introverted personality, and totally common. Although I think the amount of difference varies between people.

It also reveals the distinction between "introverted" and "shy". We introverted people aren't necessarily shy. It's possible to have a very open, outgoing, public persona. It's just not the same persona that you have when you're by yourself, or perhaps with closest friends.

(Take with large grains of salt, as I'm not any kind of psychologist.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Fill a bathtub up with Axe body spray, anabolic steroids, and Old Crow whiskey and soak in it for a couple of hours. Problem solved.</comment>


Bigger Than Heartbleed, 'VENOM' Leaves Millions of Virtual Machines Vulnerable - <AUTHOR> http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/latest-security-news/bigger-than-heartbleed-venom-leaves-millions-of-virtual-machines-vulnerable/

<comment><USER2> The discussion is over here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9538437](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9538437)

Other sources:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9541450](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9541450) (securityaffairs.co)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9541500](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9541500) (thehacktimes.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9541369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9541369) (zdnet.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9538583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9538583) (tripwire.com)</comment>


How Trump's Trade War Is Making Lobbyists Rich and Slamming Small Businesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/how-trump-trade-war-is-making-lobbyists-rich-and-slamming-small-businesses <comment><USER2> _Since the tariff decisions came down, Elrod has moved to Georgia and isn't as involved in day-to-day operations. But he's still heavily invested in the company, financially and emotionally. That's why it was particularly devastating when the tariffs killed a potential deal to sell Eccotemp to a private equity firm, which would have allowed it to keep growing while ensuring his retirement._

And despite all these, Republicans still love Trump:

 _Elrod says that despite it all, he still plans to vote for Trump in November, citing the administration's friendlier stance to his company on regulations. As for draining the swamp, Elrod doesn't blame the president._

<comment><USER3> trump has a steve jobs like power over them. no matter how much they are hurt by his actions, they will always love him. love is the only word to describe how they feel about him

<comment><AUTHOR> That's remarkable, even though I cannot see it, I guess Trump does have some sort of charisma over his supporters. Probably anything he'd do, no matter how bad, that won't make a dent in his base...</comment></comment></comment>


Google throws open doors to its top-secret data center - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/ff-inside-google-data-center/ <comment><USER2> I had the pleasure of helping to build and manage these facilities, both hardware and software, for 5 years. It's nice to see some of Google's real innovations reach the public eye. Some of the smartest folks I ever worked with at the company build absolutely mind blowing tech that the outside never has the opportunity to see or appreciate.

In fact, while much of the content in the article has been written about before, it's still probably 2-3 years or more behind where Google is actually at. I left in 2010 and did't read about anything I had not experienced.

<comment><USER3> > In fact, while much of the content in the article has been written about > before, it's still probably 2-3 years or more behind where Google is > actually at. I left in 2010 and did't read about anything I had not > experienced.

What if they just plateaued and didn't really go beyond what you had done when you were there, and this is totally accurate to today?

<comment><USER4> As someone who just recently transferred out of Platforms[1] to another group at Google, I can assure you that the technology has not plateaued.

[1] Platforms is the group at Google that designs and builds the technology that goes into the data-centers.

<comment><USER5> I concur. The platforms team are the only group at Google that consistently amaze me quarter after quarter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Single page article: (note: HN guidelines suggest always submitting the single-page article)

[http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/ff-inside- googl...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/ff-inside-google-data- center/all/)

<comment><USER7> There should be a guide for hacks on how to view articles on a single page. Yeah, wired is easy, there's a link, but often times it calls for a little php knowledge, or viewing in "print" mode. Or something random. Not always complexly obvious, but a list of tricks to try might be handy...

<comment><USER8> Have you tried the "Auto Pager" Chrome extension? It's pretty handy...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a shame that heat is just dumped outside most of the time.

EDIT:

The article talks about Google's impressive technical achievements. But there's a lot of energy that's wasted in industry. I don't mean "used inefficiently" (although that's bad too); I mean actually wasted.

I used to work at a tiny electronic sub-contracting factory. The morning shift would arrive, turn on the air compressor (2 KW), the reflow ovens (10 KW and 12 KW); and the other machines (about 7 KW).

But they'd do that even if the machines were not going to be running. All these KW were being used for no reason at all. And the machines are pretty inefficient anyway. (One of the owners thought powered machines looked more impressive. Energy costs were included in the rent so there was no incentive to think about when the machines were on or off. )

Counting that waste across all the tiny factories in the world, and including all the waste in offices - it's quite a lot.

<comment><USER10> I've often wondered if Google would heat its headquarters with a data center . . .

<comment><USER11> Few office buildings require heat, even in cold-weather climates. The residual heat from lighting, office equipment, bodies, etc., generally has to be _removed_ , not augmented.

Not always the case, but I can assure you that in California, office heating demands are very, very low.

<comment><USER12> I heard secondhand that this is even the case in Chicago in the winter. (In my apartment in a highrise there, I never ran my heat. The building was naturally 75 degrees. On some days, I even turned on the AC to get it down to a more comfortable 72!)

<comment><USER11> Why not open a window (assuming they open)?

<comment><USER12> The building was pressurized such that opening a window only resulted in air leaving through the window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> <http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/streetview/>

<comment><USER14> Amusing easter eggs throughout. One guy has rick roll videos playing on both his computers.

<comment><USER15> Love the storm trooper.

<comment><USER11> Not very effective security considering the R2 unit rolling past him.

<comment><USER12> That wasn't the droid he was looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are some photos, such as [https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/images/_300...](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/images/_3000/IDI_018.jpg)

I wonder why they've mirrored the image (the left side is quite clearly the right side flipped--take a look at the machine identifier labels). What's being hidden?

<comment><USER17> The blue LEDs in the picture you linked to, indicate that the servers are running smoothly. [1] It's possible that some servers were faulty at the time the picture was taken. More likely, it's to make the image look perfect.

[1] <http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/12>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Single page version: [http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/ff-inside- googl...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/ff-inside-google-data- center/all/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Hi Google Platform people. Very nice work. As you may know, Randall Monroe (of xkcd fame) has recently started a feature called "what if" on their site. I would like to post a question to you along those lines:

What if Google was tasked with building an orbiting datacenter? How about a Dyson ring, or sphere? How would you do it?

If we were to use all matter in the solar system for commodity linux hardware, how much gmail storage would I get? How many flops? And what sorts of computation could you do on this monster?

Please answer! This should be fun...

<comment><USER20> Space would be a terrible environment for building a datacenter. The main goals of a datacenter is to make computation as cheap, as fast and as reliable as possible. Having the datacenter orbit around Earth would not help us accomplish any of these goals.

First off, building a datacenter in space would not be cheap. It costs around $25,000 to send a kilogram of equipment into a geostationary orbit. [1] So let assume we were to use Dell PowerEdge C1100. Each server costs $14,000 and weights 18kg. [2] This means for each server sent in orbit, you could buy 32 extra ones on Earth.

Then, there is the issue of cooling. Although outer space is really cold, its vacuum prevents the heat generated by the machines from being dissipated quickly. Controlling the temperature of a such datacenter would be a very interesting engineering challenge.

And then how would you power this datacenter? Converting the excess heat back into electricity could be an interesting option. But most likely, it would need a lot of solar panels. This would make the datacenter cheap to run once built, but the upfront costs would be enormous.

And we haven't talked about speed and reliability yet. Since the signal would need to travel about 35,000 km from the geostationary orbit to reach us, communications between Earth and the datacenter would have significant delays. Even at the speed of light, the minimum round trip time would be about 250 milliseconds if we ignore all other possible sources of delay.

The hostile space weather would also make it pretty hard to run servers reliability. Radiations would destroy electronics, caused bit to flip randomly and do all bunch of fun stuff to the equipment.

But... anyhow! Let's assume anyway that by some magical work of science and Google engineering, we figure ways to manufacture a datacenter directly space for almost nothing by mining the Moon, discover some amazing thermoelectric generators with near 100% efficiency and space shields that blocks almost all radiations.

So back our previous example, a high performance PowerEdge gives us up to about 300 GFLOPS of computing power, 192 GB of RAM and 12 TB of storage.

Now if we were to convert the total mass of the Moon (7.34767309 × 10²² kg) into one monstrous datacenter, this would give us about 4.0 × 10²¹ servers. It would gives us a whooping 1.2 billions YottaFLOPS (or put differently, 1.2 × 10³³ FLOPS) of compute madness, 0.8 billions YottaBytes and 49 billions YottaBytes of storage. This monster would consume about the equivalent of 1% of the Sun's total power output.

[1]: [http://www.futron.com/upload/wysiwyg/Resources/Whitepapers/S...](http://www.futron.com/upload/wysiwyg/Resources/Whitepapers/Space_Transportation_Costs_Trends_0902.pdf) [2]: [http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-c1100/pd#TechS...](http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-c1100/pd#TechSpec)

<comment><USER21> The heatsink could be exposed to the space environment for cooling.

<comment><USER22> A heatsink works because there is some sort of medium that absorbs heat from the sink and moves away, thereby moving heat away. On earth, we use air for this, sometimes with the help of a fan.

If you stick a heatsink on equipment in space, there's no air that can move the heat away, since space is mostly empty. You'll bleed off some through infrared radiation, but that's not going to be enough.

<comment><USER21> That's right, oops!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's a nice piece, but nothing new in it, and most certainly no doors were thrown anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's the first time that there are photos from inside. There's a bigger gallery here: <http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/>

<comment><USER24> That link seems to throw Chrome 15 into an infinite redirect loop (without cutting off after n redirects).

Maybe they don't want you to see inside.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really curious: What's the reason that you are still using Chrome 15?

<comment><USER24> Corporate firewall blocks auto-update channel.

<comment><USER25> That's pretty amusing that the corporate firewall is making your system far less secure. There has most likely been hundreds of security issues fixed since Chrome 15.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They have a team causing water leaks and stealing hardware to test their disaster recovery. That is some serious penetration testing.

<comment><USER27> Isn't that just a simulation, not for real?

<comment><USER26> From the tone of the article, it doesn't seem so. They did say the protest was placated with imaginary pizza though. Hmm, like that would work :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Google should one-up Amazon and get into the Datacenter As A Service market. Service segments: normal cages (I'd rather lease cages from Colorful Pipes, Inc than Equinix), pay-n-go turnkey same-hardware in 3 georedundant locations, and lease-by-rack in multiples of 10 pre-populated racks (racks specified as compute-only or storage-only with 10G interconnects between racks).

<comment><USER29> It's doubtful that they could directly compete as is. Amazon has done well with their services because they eat their own dog food. From everything I read Bezos basically forced them to build this system and consume it for Amazon's own needs. Google has never taken this approach with their APIs and the difference shows very clearly when you consume these products.

<comment><USER30> I assume you're referencing stevey's rant, and if so you're conflating two issues. Steve was talking about the use of APIs between services at the application level, not the API for the datacenter/cloud as a platform.

<comment><USER28> I think cr is talking about how you get "baby bigtable" and "baby cloudscale" that are copies of internal services, but not what core platforms use themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 In regards to the disaster testing:

 _How did Google do this time? Pretty well. Despite the outages in the corporate network, executive chair Eric Schmidt was able to run a scheduled global all-hands meeting. The imaginary demonstrators were placated by imaginary pizza._

How does one decide what will placate imaginary demonstrators? Who calls them off?

<comment><USER31> For the purposes of tests like that, they probably just wanted to see that "reasonable action was taken", which will (hand-waving) probably take care of most instances of that type. In the event of real demonstrators, it would just be the opening salvo of damage control, but it's too hard to predicate how a crowd of angry people would react past the first move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I start to be annoyed with the "a power efficiency of 2 is the standard in datacenters". My servers are hosted in a datacenter with a global efficiency of 1.15, proved after more than a year in operation. Announcing that Google is doing 1.2 is simply announcing something wrong and I suppose Google is very happy with this number being provided to the press. It means that some competitor will use it as "Google is the best, they do 1.2, we are at 1.3 we are not too bad", where I bet Google is now near 1.1 or less (they operate without cooling in Belgium for example).

<comment><USER33> [http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal/...](http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal/index.html)

You're right -- those PUE numbers from the article were talking about their PUE at the time. Google's 2012 average PUE across all facilities was 1.12/1.13 with a minimum PUE of 1.09/1.10.

Also, Google puts enormous care into the process of calculating PUE since it's kind of black art and if you aren't careful you'll leave out some aspect of your operation that will mislead you into thinking your PUE is lower than it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Really cool article - would be amazing to walk through that facility.... love the Google coloured pipes from the pictures

</comment><comment><USER35> It is unfortunate (for the rest of us) that datacenter tech is such a competitive advantage for Google. If they were able to share their breakthroughs more readily with others, imagine how much less of the "1.5% of all power globally" datacenters could be using.

</comment><comment><USER11> When they say that supercomputing is essentially a plumbing problem ... looking at these photos, no kidding.

</comment><comment><USER36> All caveats about chrome-dev aside, I find it amusing that this site's navigation does not work in Chrome v24.0.1297.0. Had to use Aurora to view it.

Maybe Google really is Sun v2 ("We are the dot in dot-com" == "Where the Internet lives").

</comment><comment><USER37> Good read but most of that is not new information. I read a lot of that in a book about Google over two years ago. The last ~ 1 page was new though.

<comment><USER38> Officially announcing things that "everybody knows" already can still make a difference. It means that you can ask Google executives about those things in public appearances and they'll at least acknowledge the question even if they refuse to answer substantially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> An incredible article!

</comment><comment><USER40> Seriously. I can't believe they require JavaScript to view this all this eye- candy and server porn.

<http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/>

I thought GWT was designed to "compile" rendered pages for a wide variety of browsers and permutations of configurations?

The pictures are very pretty, but that's really awful of them to release a PR site like this, and force users into using JavaScript.

Unforgivable.</comment>


GitMask – Develop Anonymously - <AUTHOR> https://www.gitmask.com/ <comment><USER2> For developers who truly care about anonymity, is relying on the server to strip out personal information really a good idea?

If I were that paranoid, I feel like I'd greatly prefer a tool that strips everything out on the client, then establishes a connection to your site via a Tor hidden service which then publishes the PR.

Another concern; isn't this a potential avenue for spam? How long before someone submits a bunch of spam PRs through the service and gets your Gitmask user account banned on GitHub as a result?

<comment><USER3> To be honest, I wrote GitMask for myself. Yep,if anonymity is really important to you, a VPN and/or TOR is required. GitMask just ensures that you don't unintentionally leak personal info. GitMask is open source, so if you don't trust _me_ to run it, just run it yourself.

Spam is a potential issue. All PR's reference gitmask.com so maintainers have someone to message if they get flooded.

<comment><USER4> Are you worried about potential licensing issues? Some projects make contributors agree to certain license contribution guidelines before they can accept pull requests.

If there is a question about non-OSS code coming in from Gitmask in a lawsuit, the affected project will most likely have to discard and rewrite all those contributions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> woah, this is my project. Glad you guys find it interesting. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

<comment><USER5> Please stop overriding my browser's/OS's scrolling behavior. I know best how I want to view your content. Thank you.

Also, the H in GitHub is capitalized.

<comment><USER3> fixed the capitalization. I'll have to figure out whats locking up the scrollbar in the CSS though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can see why this is attractive in some circumstances. I don't see how this can be reconciled with copyright law. How can Anonymous Hacker show that they have auhority to transfer a clean copyright in their contribution? If you accept an anonymous patch, aren't you also accepting liability for all possible encumbrances?

<comment><USER7> In Germany you can't transfer your copyright.

I think an unknown crator would be the only way to make something that wasn't "owned" by him/her in this case.

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, how does employment and contracting work in Germany?

If you pay me to make a software product, does it mean that I always keep the copyright?

<comment><USER9> You keep the copyright, but you give away all rights. It's mostly semantics - the result is the same.

<comment><USER10> There are differences between Copyright and Urheberrecht (the german thing).

For example, under Urheberrecht an author can always revoke the rights of the publisher, while under Copyright the rights are traded away and nothing remains with the author.

In Germany you cannot buy stock photos and use them however you want. The creator may sue you if he thinks he was not treated fairly.

Back to source code: No fear! If a programmer gives away source code knowingly under an Open Source licence, it cannot be revoked since the terms of publication are very clear. Still, there is no such concept as "giving copyright to a foundation" under Urheberrecht.

In general, Copyright protects the publishers, while Urheberrecht protects the creators.

<comment><USER11> > For example, under Urheberrecht an author can always revoke the rights of > the publisher, while under Copyright the rights are traded away and nothing > remains with the author.

In copyright, transfers from authors can be reclaimed, though there is a _specific_ 5-year time window (starting 35 years after the grant, basically) for this to be exercised.

> In Germany you cannot buy stock photos and use them however you want. The > creator may sue you if he thinks he was not treated fairly.

The US copyright system has a similar protection for creators of unique or limited physical works of visual art, but it doesn't protect against reproductions in derivative works or use of stock photos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting project but I didn't see any information regarding data collection and retention on your site. Granted that's unlikely to come up but in theory I would imagine someone could subpoena your for information regarding who that person was that created the PR, no?

Also curious how this does with, say, updating a PR.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, adding a privacy/retention policy would be a good idea.

Under the hood its pretty simple (and open source), just an AWS lambda squashing the commits and stripping metadata before pushing to Github. Potentially you could tie the commit to an IP address, but I'm not logging any of that info.

I'm not really sure how I can prove that the code I'm running is the code you'll find on GH though.

<comment><USER13> _> I'm not really sure how I can prove that the code I'm running is the code you'll find on GH though._

I think this attestation is something Amazon (and other cloud providers) could offer in the future - they're the only ones who can really prove it.

"I, Amazon AWS, do solemnly declare that the code running on {service} is {git hash}"

<comment><USER12> Only issue with that aspect is if they still allow configuration (I mean they'd sorta have to) and what if you could exploit a testing configuration to do whatever activity you want to hide? You could get the badge from AWS but still do what you wanted.

Honestly not sure there is a good solution for that.

<comment><USER14> You could always have a script which strips down things to only necessary configuration values for production and then generates a tarball that could be verified. It seems like it would be possible to get down to a subset of settings that could take on any value while still allowing you to trust the service. Of course, if the settings don't have to be secret, they could also just be baked in as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure that many OSS projects are going to be interested in merging a patch where a conversation with the patch author for review/feedback can't happen

<comment><USER3> I get that, but at the same time, there's a ton of reasons why a developer might not want their name attached to a bunch of code.

As a maintainer myself, I can respect that. If the PR is important enough, I'm more than happy to merge it without knowing the author (with some additional tweaking if necessary).

<comment><USER16> Can you tell me one real example of why somebody would do that? I mean REAL, not some random reason you just think of.

<comment><USER17> Legally questionable projects. There's plenty of projects on github which can be used for nefarious purposes with disclaimers that it shouldn't be used as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like this, but it does make it difficult to discuss the PR. Perhaps you could issue a private key or token in response to the POST and then add comments with that key/token?

<comment><USER3> that's an interesting idea, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how long that will last until GitHub bans them for (presumably) massive amount of spam. The fact that it's PRs only, not just issues, makes it a bit harder, but I can't imagine it'd be that hard to abuse

<comment><USER3> To be honest, I was worried about that as well. But it's been pretty good so far. Gitmask always adds a comment in the PR mentioning where the PR is comming from, so in the event of any projects/repos getting spammed, I can hopefully disable PR's being opened against those projects.

<comment><USER20> To that end, you may want to include a prominent note on the website about how to report abusive activity and what your policy is for dealing with it.

Simply having that easily accessible may got a long way.

<comment><USER3> Good point.

<comment><USER21> Could also rate limit 1 PR for a given repo per day. Perhaps even have a queue.

<comment><USER3> I don't really want to go down the rate limit route quite yet, but it could be an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I did not really understand the benefit in comparison with a sock-puppet account linked to a throw-away e-mail address. That's the universal way for any web registration form.

<comment><USER23> If you're not paying attention, git pulls information out of your OS and sticks it into your git commits without asking you. It does at least tell you it's done that, but it doesn't ask you before hand, it just goes ahead and does it, then begs forgiveness. I see a lot of value in having a tool in my workflow that strips all of that without my having to think about it.

<comment><USER24> > _git pulls information out of your OS and sticks it into your git commits > without asking you_

Really? The only information I know of that gets into a commit is your name & email and the current time, and the first two have to be configured before you can commit.

<comment><USER23> It depends on whether it can pull your email address out of the OS.

If you're on a linux machine, usually it can't, so it pops up the "set your global user and email" prompt without committing things.

If you're on a domain windows machine though, often it can. When that's the case, it does the commit first, and then asks you to set the config explicitly. You then swear, change the config to be blank, and then go amend the commit you just made.

In any case, the whole thing is a pain that adds mental overhead I'd rather spend on programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is fantastic. I have been doing all my personal open-source work anonymously, and it requires a surprising amount of tooling to get it right. I will give gitmask a try.

<comment><USER16> May I ask why? Why did you feel you have to hide your identity?

<comment><USER26> Why should they disclose their identity and leave a permanent digital footprint? Some of us are private people by nature. Some of us have stalkers, sensitive employment situations etc.

I miss the pseudonym era of the internet. Uploading my nudes to Facebook so they can ID me is so dystopian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For proper anonymization, you need to change code/naming style. Codestylommetry can easily identify most developers. Ideally, an obfuscator generates some "private key" that would guide it how exactly it should change/reverse change upon push/pull so that public repo has anonymized code whereas developer the real one. However, it won't work for multi-developer projects.

<comment><USER3> I think that's pushing past the goals of GitMask. As much as possible I want to leave the code as is, as the developer intended, while stripping all personally identifiable information and metadata.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Just because you think DICSS is amusing, doesn't mean you want your boss to > know about it. How about your girlfriend?

It's 2018. Dick jokes and "your girlfriend" examples have no place in software engineering, not that they ever did. That holds doubly true for a project whose target audience potentially includes people who have reasons to protect their identity.

As potentially better examples: contributions to the bitcoin repository tend to result in spam from random people who think that the list of every contributor to bitcoin is the right list to send random cryptocurrency spam to. Or, you might want to contribute to the https-everywhere repository without revealing sensitive sites you're contributing entries for. ("Potentially sensitive" here could mean a wide variety of things, such as sites for sufferers of a particular medical condition, sites for organizations whose members regularly get targeted, etc.)

<comment><USER3> Fair enough, the examples could use some work. I kinda just threw the landing page together without thinking about it much.

I'll take another pass at it.

<comment><USER29> Unrelated to the GP, but I really like the design of the landing page — did you put it together yourself?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is cool. I've been looking for an "open relay" to help with collaborating on GitHub-hosted projects that's easier than doing account resets.[1] I'll check it out later.

Side note: the Git project is enforcing the Git trademark now.[2] If you want to use "Git" for your branding, you'll need to get approval.

1\. [https://www.colbyrussell.com/2016/02/13/keeping-a-low- profil...](https://www.colbyrussell.com/2016/02/13/keeping-a-low-profile-on- github.html)

2\. [https://public- inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...](https://public- email@example.com/)

<comment><USER19> >If you have an account and you're participating in a project in any way through github.com, you're part of its social network.

What part of GitHub does this person have a problem with? It's entirely unclear what they mean by social network. Is that like, showing the commits you make on your profile? Having a page that shows what you've worked on at all? This seems like good ways to be difficult to work with in open source projects for zero benefit.

<comment><USER30> The person who wrote that post is me.

> Is that like, showing the commits you make on your profile?

Yes.

> Having a page that shows what you've worked on at all?

Yes.

> This seems like good ways to be difficult to work with in open source > projects

First, open source doesn't start and end with GitHub.

Second, I prefer not to publish anything to Facebook or Twitter feeds, either. That's a position that folks seem to find palatable. (In fact, it's one that programmers appear to be disproportionately sympathetic to.) I don't see why it shouldn't remain so if the subject of the conversation is GitHub.

> for zero benefit

Opting out of the same kinds of personal broadcasting on GitHub isn't "zero benefit" to me. And if it is zero-benefit, it means the service linked here is zero-value. I feel differently. We don't have to agree.

<comment><USER19> >First, open source doesn't start and end with GitHub.

I didn't mean to imply it is, but if an open source project finds it easier to use one platform (such as github), trying to subvert that by emailing patches sounds like a very annoying thing to do. It seems similar to submitting pull requests to the Linux Kernel on GitHub, which explicitly requests that you submit patches on the mailing list.

<comment><USER30> I'm not here to defend arguments I never made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Throwaway account:

I enjoy scraping GitHub user data and have found it a great goldmine of data.

95% of the time I can recover an email address for a user based on their commits, even when the email is not publicly visible on GitHub.

Very insecure.

<comment><USER32> A few years ago I watched a security talk where the spearker showed how much sensitive info was in Github. There was an amazing number of passwords, and what really surprised me was that a number of them realized after they pushed the sensitive data what they did and tried to delete it. . . . . they also thought simply committing over it was the way to delete it. It is possible that several of these companies did the correct thing and changed the password after they realized their mistake, but I have a feeling not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> yet another site that won't even show anything without JavaScript. :(

Even though it's only static images and text!…

</comment><comment><USER34> I don't understand it.

If you are a project maintainer on GitHub, how could you accept a PR from an anonymous user? Let's say you accepted it, and later some company said that the code from that PR is "stolen" from their code base, and that's true, how do you deal with that?

<comment><USER17> There's absolutely no way for you to verify that code submitted as a PR isn't stolen, anonymous or not. Even if I created an account with a legitimate identity and submitted a PR to your project which you accepted and then found out was stolen, what can you do about it? Slap on the wrist and move on.

I hate the idea of having an identity on github. I don't want to be contacted for support, and I don't want my email being harvested by spam bots and recruiting agencies (both of which has happened).

<comment><USER34> The absolute solution for that is force contributors to sign CLA, and I don't think there's a way to sign that anonymously.

I know a lot of smaller projects won't bother with CLA, but their maintainers can still assess the possibility of stolen code and act accordingly. If I'm a maintainer and the possibility of an incoming PR is stolen (the complexity of the PR, basically) is high enough, I would look at the information associated with the contributor (the GitHub account, the email address, etc.). If it's someone contribute a lot to other open source projects I would be more likely to accept it.

Actually on second thought, GitHub really should provide free CLA management service to all its users: you (as a project maintainer) can enable CLA requirement on your project, once enabled a GitHub-run CLA bot will ask new contributors sign a CLA in their first PR, and you can get all the signed CLAs when needed. If GitLab or BitBucket provide this feature before GitHub I'll move my projects over in a heartbeat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Interesting idea but this part made me cringe

"Just because you think DICSS is amusing, doesn't mean you want your boss to know about it. How about your SO?"

If you are writing code you need to hide from your SO you have some serious relationship problems.

<comment><USER36> Never heard of DICSS, very disappointed there isn't a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

<comment><USER4> Makes me think of C Plus Equality:

[https://github.com/ErisBlastar/cplusequality](https://github.com/ErisBlastar/cplusequality)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is the dumbest thing I have seen on the front page of HN in a long time.

If I really wanted to be anonymous on GitHub I'd create a "fake" account/would not use my name.

<comment><USER38> To create a fake account you need a fake email as well and configure git to not include your email; so I can see some value in this proposition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Without accountability, how would you combat hidden backdoors in code? Doesn't accountability reduce the risk for hidden backdoors?

<comment><USER40> What does accountability have to do with anything? Do you think GitHub verifies who you are when you sign up? They don't. Even if they did, a person introducing backdoors may not even live in a jurisdiction where this is illegal, or where you have any chance of sueing them. Do you think the data in a git commit is accurate? You can put anybody's name and email address there, and any date you like.

Please explain which part of this project ensures _even less_ accountability than accepting code from a newly created GitHub account.

In addition, I would love to hear how you would hold someone introducing a backdoor through a GitHub PR accountable even if you know exactly who they are, where they live, and have a video of them opening the pr, and a signed confession.

<comment><USER39> Fair enough Thiez, the difference between the current situation with and without GitMask isn't a whole lot.

The only difference is that GitMask invites more anonymous developers. Whether that is in the interest of other (anonymous and/or non-anonymous) developers and users is a matter of perspective, and case-by-case hindsight 20/20.

As for holding someone who's known accountable for their mistakes. That's the entire point of using your real name when it comes to professional work: it increases accountability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is so cool I love this

</comment><comment><USER9> What's the point? Just make an anonymous GitHub account, they have no real name policy, after all.

Participation in discussions is a necessity for most interactions with an open source community.

</comment><comment><USER42> This webpage just shows a loading spinner with JS disabled. And after the recent bugs I intend to keep noscript on for some time.

EDIT: Just saying, if you link to a main page... Make it accessible. Most serious privacy advocates probably have JS disabled by default.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Javascript should be required for simple static content.

<comment><USER43> Did you mean shouldn't be required?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it still profitable to start an app development company? - <AUTHOR> Do you think companies (enterprises and startups) still outsource app development? Will it decline or grow? Any inputs? <comment><USER2> Yes. This will most likely always be profitable.

The tough part is finding clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, also scaling it to a 100 person company might be challenging</comment></comment>


We Need a State - <AUTHOR> https://www.stallman.org/articles/why-we-need-a-state.html <comment><USER2> I hate DRM on a personal level, but it's obviously protected under free speech, just as much as breaking DRM should also be protected speech.</comment>


ISRO successfully launches EMISAT and 28 satellites all in one go - happy-go-lucky https://www.isro.gov.in/launcher/pslv-c45-emisat-mission <comment> happy-go-lucky Here're some pictures. When sky is not the limit!!

[https://twitter.com/prasarbharati/status/831786401620451330/...](https://twitter.com/prasarbharati/status/831786401620451330/photo/1)

</comment><comment> happy-go-lucky Here's a video of the launch:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynblpX8dcUY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynblpX8dcUY)</comment>


Social Security moves to block the mentally ill from purchasing guns - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/regulation/pending-regs/278740-social-security-moves-to-block-the-mentally-ill-from-purchasing-guns <comment><AUTHOR> _The Social Security Administration (SSA) is proposing to report people who receive disability benefits and have a mental health condition to the FBI 's background check system._

A few thoughts:

1) Wow: All mental health conditions (among Social Security disability recipients) are suspect and will be reported to the police.

2) How does the Social Security Administration even know who has a "mental health condition"? What about theh privacy of medical records?

3) Note how vulnerable this group is; if you are relying on Social Security disability payments, you probably can't afford to forgo them in order to protect your privacy. Civil rights are only for tose who can afford them.

4) Finally, what would a President with fascist-like tendancies do with the massive government and commercial surveillance infrastructure, with so few privacy protections?</comment>